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Abraham Lincoln 

As A MAN OF LETTERS 



Abraham Lincoln 

As A MAN OF Letters 



BY 



Luther Emerson :^obinson, A.M. 

Professor of English, Monrnout/i College 
Author of "A History of Illinois" 



"There is but one way in which you can take 
mere literature as an education, and that is 
directly, at first hand." — IVoodroiv JVilson. 




CHICAGO 

The reilly & britton Co. 



Copyright, 1918 

by 

The Reilly & Britton Co. 



Made in U. S. A. 



Abraham Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

m -3 1919 

©CI.Ar,l.l775 



To 
A. D. R. 



PREFACE 

Any attempt to set down with some exactness a 
definition of a man of letters would doubtless give 
rise to considerable diversity of opinion. Such a 
result would, however, give value to the attempt. 
And yet, the class of men of letters is fairly distinct 
and understood. Time comes nearest judging well 
the virtues of those who write as well as of those 
who interpret what has been written. Whatever 
time holds out as thoughtful and beautiful and per- 
petually interesting among the writings of men and 
women is likely to be esteemed by the judgment of 
all as literature. 

John Morley places Burke among men of letters. 
He gives especial distinction to Burke's speech on 
conciliation with America. Something that Morley 
says of Burke applies with aptness to Lincoln : 

Out-arguing is not perhaps the right word for most 
of Burke's performances. He is at heart thinking 
more of the subject itself, than of those on whom it 
was his apparent business to impress a particular view 
of it. He surrenders himself wholly to the matter, 

7 



8 Preface 

and follows up, though with a strong and close tread, 
all the excursions to which it may give rise in an elastic 
intelligence — "motion." as De Quincey says, "propa- 
gating motion, and throwing off life." But then this 
exuberant way of thinking, this willingness to let the 
subject lead, is less apt in public discourse than it is 
in literature, and from this comes the literary quality 
of Burke's speeches. 

In debate, Burke surpasses Lincoln in an "exu- 
berant way of thinking." He is more sweeping in 
range of imagination, and in great degree affects 
the scholarly and rhetorical form of statement. In 
matters of public policy, his outstanding principle 
of conduct was like that held and practiced by Lin- 
coln : "Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the 
truest wisdom." 

Both men were face to face with a great national 
issue. Burke remains to us the greatest spokesman 
of the problem before him. Lincoln was not only 
the most important spokesman of his, but he was 
a powerful public leader and administrator as well. 
Burke wearied his audience; Lincoln captured his. 
Burke's prose maintains a Miltonic elevation and 
seriousness to the end of its long flight. Lincoln 
was more direct and economical in speech. He is 
as sure as Burke in his "willingness to let the subject 



Preface 9 

lead." But he could not, or would not, set for 
himself the stately pace that lured the talents of 
the other. In the fine art of English prose, Lin- 
coln's contribution, though not large, belongs to the 
best in literature. 

If we broaden our conception of English prose 
literature somewhat, we shall not find it necessary 
to limit Lincoln's contribution of importance to his 
masterpieces. We shall be able to assent to the esti- 
mate of the London Spectator, as it spoke of this 
subject: 

Mr. Lincoln did not get his ability to handle prose 
through his gift of speech. That these are separate, 
though coordinate, faculties, is a matter beyond dis- 
pute, for many of the great orators of the world have 
proved themselves exceedingly inefficient in the matter 
of deliberate composition. Mr. Lincoln enjoyed both 
gifts. His letters, dispatches, memoranda, and written 
addresses are even better than his speeches ; and in 
speaking thus of Mr. Lincoln's prose, we are not think- 
ing merely of certain pieces of inspired rhetoric. . . . 
Whatever the subject he has in hand, whether it be 
bold or impassioned, business-like or pathetic, we feel 
that we "lose no particle of the exact, characteristic, 
extreme expression" of the thing written about. We 
have it all, not merely a part. Every line shows that 
the writer is master of his materials ; that he guides 



10 Preface 

his words, never his words him. That is indeed the 
predominant note throughout all jMr. Lincoln's work. 

The perspective of the years adds mightily to the 
meaning of the man whose personality and ideals 
w^ere so vital to the perpetuity of America as the 
home of liberty, — of liberty for the New World and 
the Old. No explanation is needed for the unflag- 
ging interest in his life and work. It is because so 
many of his great utterances are as timely to-day as 
w^hen they were first made. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I The Beginnings 15 

II Intimations of a Public Career 26 

III Prelude to the Great Debate 42 

IV The Lincoln-Douglas Debate 58 

V Epilogue of the Debates 'ji 

VI East and West IVIeet at Cooper Insti- 
tute 91 

VII On the Road to Washington 119 

VIII The Presidency and TLiE Civil W'ar. .. . 140 
IX From Gettysburg to the Second 

Inaugural 169 

X The Closing Triumph of a Great 

Career 186 

APPENDIX : Selections from Lincoln's 
Works 

addresses and state papers 219 

letters 289 

verse 322 

miscellanies 330 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 335 

NOTE ON ILLUSTRATIONS zil 

INDEX 339 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Reproduced from an etching by Joseph Pierre 

NUYTTENS, THE BeLGIAN-AmERICAN PAINTER 
AND ETCHER. FrOUi'lSpicCC 

Statue of Lincoln by Andrew O'Connor. 
Erected in front of the Capitol, Spring- 
field, Illinois. 1918. Facing Page 64 

From a portrait of Lincoln made at Prince- 
ton, Illinois, July 4. 1856, by W. H. 
Masters. Facing Page 128 

Bronze statuette of Lincoln by Truman 

Bartlett. Paris, 1877. Facing Page IQ2 

(See Note on Illustrations, page ^J/J 



CHAPTER I 



THE BEGINNINGS 



A Youth to whom was given 

So much of earth — so much of heaven. 

— IVoi'dswortli. 

Abraham Lincoln's career is of perennial interest 
to the world because it represents a high personal 
achievement accomplished under severe difficulties. 
Such an achievement, entirely possible in a democ- 
racy, excites admiration among every generation of 
men. It contains so many points of human inter- 
est that a large and growing literature has come 
into existence to tell the story of his struggles with 
poverty, his untoward opportunities for acquiring 
an education, to describe his personality, to inter- 
pret his political views and policies, and to exhibit 
his "genius for expression." So significant is his 
position in history that we preserve every scrap of 
his writing, trivial or important, and perpetuate 
every tale or tradition that promises to add to our 
memorial of the man and his performance. For 
many, his utterances on public questions have become 
as touchstones of political wisdom. There are rea- 

15 



16 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

sons also for believing that, had the circnmstances 
of his life, fallen in more favorable ways, he might 
have become as distinguished in the field of letters 
as he was eminent in statesmanship. These reasons 
are to be found within that large body of letters, 
addresses, and state papers which he has left as a 
legacy from the wealth of exertion and clear think- 
ing which fell to his experience. 

\Ye know Lincoln's biography intimately enough 
to discover that his mental life was a persistent and 
progressive unfolding in the direction of genuine 
culture. He was ambitious to acquire knowledge. 
He laid hold of e\'en meagre occasions to widen his 
horizons. Apparently he was equally eager to lead 
a life of action. At the age of twenty-one he had 
successfully piloted his father's family from Indiana 
to their new homestead in Illinois. Within two 
years after this change of residence he became a 
candidate for election to the Illinois legislature from 
Sangamon county. In the address which he issued 
to the voters of the county in March, 1832, we may 
find a clear hint of the type of mind and aspiration 
which distinguished his maturity.^ Although up to 
this time he had enjoyed the privilege of less than 
a year's training in the elementary school and had 

I Page 219, Ap])en(lix. 



The Beginnings 17 

studied English grammar only "imperfectly," the 
sentences and ideas of this first political pronounce- 
ment arrest our attention. One is led to wonder 
how large a percentage of our legislators to-day 
would be able to write paragraphs at once as co- 
herent and thoughtful as are contained in Lincoln's 
"handbill" written when he was twenty-three. 

This earliest political document of Lincoln's, with 
its beginning of deliberate thinking and good style, 
suggests also a negative characteristic of the man. 
It contains a good-natured confession of humility 
springing from that sense of his lowly origin which 
seems to have survived throughout his life in much 
that he wrote and spoke. This characteristic was 
coupled with a certain infection of pioneerism 
which, while enhancing the popular love of Lincoln, 
left its stamp upon his humor, touched with medioc- 
rity many of his figures of speech, and made very 
commonplace language suffice for much of his cor- 
respondence involving professional or political rou- 
tine. Hence, a large part of his writings do not 
share the literary distinction of another part for 
the reason that Lincoln's psychology contained lean- 
ings that were as ordinary as his moments of uprush 
were beautiful and ideal. A touch of rusticity, con- 
tributed bv his birth and environment, is to be found 



18 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

in much of his written work, but it enriched his 
personality and deepened his sympathy and imagi- 
nation. But when his mind was moved to its high- 
est points of feeHng and sincerity, his expression 
took on a purity, an elegance, and an insight, which 
gave it the qualities of literature. 
]/ If the last paragraph of the "handbill" of 1832 
contains a glimpse of that negative influence which 
Lincoln did so much to overcome, but never wholly 
escaped, the platform upon which he became for the 
third time a candidate for the legislature, in 1836, 
still better illustrates the point. In the interim he 
had studied English grammar, had made some prog- 
ress in the study of law, had read newspapers and 
had committed to memory certain poems which ap- 
pealed to him. He had been deputy surveyor, and 
had already had one term's experience in the legis- 
lature. This platform was written for publication, 
yet has the form and language of a pioneer to pio- 
neers. It is, however, concerned exclusively with 
the writer's political convictions, and contains Lin- 
coln's only known declaration in support of woman 
suffrage. This declaration is not expressed in a 
separate paragraph or with any formality, but is 
abruptly tacked on to the end of a sentence.* In 

I Page 289, Appendix. 



The Beginnings 19 

less than two weeks after the puljHcation- of this 
plebeian utterance, Lincoln penned a letter to one 
Colonel Robert Allen — who had intimated a knowl- 
edge of facts damaging to Lincoln's personal char- 
acter — which leaves nothing to be desired in dignity 
or choice of words. ^ The sentences are well con- 
structed and the style and language are unecjui vocal 
and perspicuous. 

Throughout Lincoln's works the reader traces 
these opposite marks of style — the homebred and 
the finished. The intellectual elements entering into 
his mind's growth during the three years he was 
postmaster at New Salem ( 1833- 1836) were impor- 
tant. During his brief experience as storekeeper he 
read Blackstone's "Commentaries on the Laws of 
England" and followed this up with other law 
books borrowed from Springfield friends. He had 
been a diligent reader of newspapers, an opportu- 
nity favored by his incumbency as postmaster. His 
acquaintance during this time with the Rogers 
family, who had come to Illinois from Coopers- 
town, N. Y., in 1818, and at whose place, a few 
miles from New Salem, another postoffice was estab- 
lished, furnished Lincoln with new cultural inter- 
ests. His trips to take mail from New Salem to the 

I Page 290. Appendix. 



20 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

Rogers office gave him access not only to additional 
newspapers, but to the "chest of books" which the 
Rogers family had brought with them to Illinois.^ 
Newspapers remained with Lincoln an important 
source of intellectual stimulus. From them he ob- 
tained political information and comment, reports 
of lectures, poems, and foreign intelligence. 

Lincoln's studious reading of newspapers and 
such books as came within his reach constantly en- 
larged as he came into wider contact with people. 
This wider contact was afforded by his attendance 
upon the legislature at Springfield, where he made 
industrious use of the new State library, chiefly to 
enhance his knowledge of the law, preparatory to 
his future profession. His biographers agree that 
Lincoln had a highly retenti\'e memory. There is 
evidence to show that both upon the stump and in 
private conversation, he was acquiring a vocabulary 
of ever-increasing range and accuracy. He had 
become a careful and ambitious student of words, 
and sought rather than avoided the stimulus of a 
crowd in the practice of speech-making. As a young 
man at Gentryville, Indiana, and later at New Salem, 
he had the reputation of knowing more as a result 

I Rankin, "Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, pp. 
136-139 



The Beginnings 21 

of reading than anyone else in the neighborhood.' 
It was during his New Salem experience that his 
courtship of Anne Rutledge occurred. Apparently he 
encouraged her own intellectual aspirations, for at 
this time their mutual friend, Arminda Rogers, tu- 
tored Miss Rutledge in Kirkham's grammar, Blair's 
rhetoric, and other elementary subjects, as a foun- 
dation for her admission to a young women's acad- 
emy at Jacksonville.- Anne Rutledge's death in 1835 
destroyed their cherished hopes. Lincoln's recov- 
ery from a severe illness was followed by two years 
of assiduous study during the intervals between 
legislative and other employments concerned with 
his livelihood. 

The year 1837, while he was still a member of the 
legislature, marks an eventful stage in Lincoln's 
career. In this year he moved to Springfield, which 
he had been influential in having made the capital 
of the State. He gained admission to the Spring- 
field bar, and entered into partnership with John T. 
Stewart, a lawyer of ability and experience, w^hom 
Lincoln met in the legislature, and from whom he 
had borrowed books and received encouragement in 
the prosecution of his legal studies. It is not pos- 

1 Browne. "Everyday Life of Abraham Lincoln," pp. 26, 2^. 

2 Rankin, ibid., p. 68. 



22 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

sible, up to this time, to specify just what books had 
entered into Lincohi's cultural reading. There is 
evidence that this material included the English 
Bible, certain of Shakespeare's plays, "Pilgrim's 
Progress." "Robinson Crusoe," Weems's Wash- 
ington, Statutes of Indiana, a history of the United 
States, the Declaration of Independence, and the 
Constitution.^ Just what knowledge he had of 
poetry and of fiction is indefinite. He was familiar 
with current political parties and issues, both State 
and national, and had arrived at settled convictions 
upon matters of public interest. He had already 
exhibited the elan of a politician and had ambitions 
looking toward the future. During this year he 
made a well-considered speech before the legislature 
on the State bank issue, which a capable student of 
Lincoln regards as "an able argument, logical, con- 
vincing, and expressed in the best English."- The 
speech is indeed expressed in excellent English, and 
.shows a studious grasp of the subject discussed. 

1 Herndon and Weik, I -.37-45. Herndon speaks of Webster's 
Spelling Book and the American Speller, Pike's Arithmetic, 
Murray's English Reader, and /Esop's I'ables as among Lin- 
coln's school books in Indiana. He quotes John Hanks on 
Abe's devotion to reading, reproduces specimens of his juvenile 
verse and mentions two prose compositions, one on the "Amer- 
ican Government" and another on "Temperance." Arnold, in 
liis "Abraham Lincoln," includes Burns's poems in his early 
reading, p. 21. 

2 Richards, "Abraham Lincoln, tlie Lawyer-Statesman," pp. 
4, 5- 



The Beginnings 23 

Lincoln was now a man of advancing reputation 
in the State, recognized as a resourceful debater and 
as a man of integrity and ideals. On January 27 
of this same year, he gave before the Young Men's 
Lyceum of Springfield a written address on the 
"Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions." The 
language of this address as a whole is over-rhetor- 
ical, as might be expected from a young man ambi- 
tious as an orator, self -instructed in the art of 
expression, and still under the spell of frontier stand- 
ards. But the address has the substance of high 
ideals and moral convictions as well as reflection. 
It contains the following quotable passage on law 
enforcement : 

Let every American, every lover of liberty, every 
well-wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of 
the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular 
the laws of the country, and never to tolerate their 
violation by others. As the patriots of "seventy-six" 
did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, 
so to the support of the Constitution and the Laws let 
every American pledge his life, his ])roperty, and his 
sacred honor ; let every man remember that to violate 
the law is to trample on the blood of his father, and 
to tear the charter of his own and his children's liberty. 
Let reverence for tlic laws l)e breathed bv everv 



24 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

American mother to tlie lisping babe that prattles on 
her lap. Let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and 
in colleges. Let it be written in primers, spelling- 
books, and in almanacs. Let it be preached from the 
pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in 
courts of justice. And. in short, let it become the 
political religion of the nation. 

This address, instinct with noble feeling and sin- 
cerity, foreshadows the deep devotion to duty and 
the natural refinement of spirit which Lincoln, under 
the impress of experience, so often exhibited. It is 
prophetic of the high seriousness and simplicity 
w^hich gradually matured toward the faultless diction 
in W'hich he conceived the Gettysburg Address and 
the Second Inaugural. 

The student of Lincoln's works is sometimes 
tempted to ascribe his command of good English to 
genius.^ He does indeed appear to have had some 
native gift of style. There is a letter of Lincoln's, 
dated April i, 1838, to Airs. O. H. Browning, anent 
his courtship of Alary Owen and their contemplated 
marriage.- The story is familiar to readers of Lin- 
coln's biography, but it is told in this letter with a 

1 Compare C. W. Eliot, in "The New Definition of an Edu- 
cated Man." 

2 Page 291, Appendi.x. 



The Beginnings 25 

freedom and elegance of diction which suggests the 
artist in narration. As a composition the piece en- 
gages greater interest with the re-reading. It be- 
trays a certain Addisonian acumen for words that 
goes far to persuade one that the writer held within 
his endowments the possibility of a successful essay- 
ist. The informal type of expression is lighted up 
with delicacy of humor and a touch of literary allu- 
sion. The lady in question, when he had first seen 
her, was "over-size," but now had grow'n "a fair 
match for Falstafif." Although he had misgivings 
about his affection for her. he determined he would 
make no concession to dishonor, but would stand 
"firm as the surge-repelling rock."^ 

I For a ludicrously puritanic estimate of the letter to Mrs. 
Browning, see Lamon's Life of Lincoln, p. i8i. Herndon takes 
a more cheerful view of it, p. 156 flf. 



CHAPTER II 

INTIMATIONS OF A PUBLIC CAREER 

A good man, through obscurest aspiration, 
Has still an instinct of the one true way. 

— Goethe 

The chief art of learning, as Locke has observed, is to at- 
tempt but little at a time. The widest excursions of th'e mind 
are made by short flights frequently repeated; the most lofty 
fabrics of science are formed by the continued accumulation 
of single propositions. — Johnson. 

In the year 1839, Lincoln, in company with E. D. 
Baker and two other Whigs of local repute, engaged 
in a public debate in Springfield against Stephen A. 
Douglas and three other Democrats, on the relative 
merits of the Independent Treasury and the Na- 
tional Bank. Aside from being Mr. Lincoln's first 
public appearance against Douglas — an early study 
for the great debate nearly twenty years in the 
future — his speech on this occasion contains abun- 
dant evidence of his intimate acquaintance with 
public documents and his capacity to gather and 
assemble details of fact. There is a careful and 
convincing arrangement of the materials of his ar- 
gument, and a competent knowledge of the Con- 

26 



Intimations of a Public Career 27 

stilution aiul contemporary hisUjry. On its argu- 
mentative side, this speech is a notable augury of 
the Peoria speech of 1854, also in reply to Douglas. 
Its closing paragraphs, however, contain examples 
of those antithetical aspects of his style to which 
reference has been made. In his rebuttal of Mr. 
Lamborn, one of his Democratic opponents, Lin- 
coln uses a style that in the main is balanced and 
restrained. His speech closes, however, with a 
climax much too florid for impressive discussion. 

This debate is important in an effort to trace the 
development of Lincoln's power of thought and his 
command of an adec[uate expression. It exhibits 
his two-fold capacity for matter-ofrfact reasoning 
from things well known and his strength of native 
fancy and feeling. These could soar when touched 
by the deeper aspects of the subject or the occasion. 
They disclose the presence of a color-realm in his 
soul which, upon occasion, could clothe his convic- 
tions in the raiment of beautiful and moving words. 
His sense for the practical made him a wise and 
helpful counsellor. This side of his mind is re- 
vealed in much that he wrote, but nowhere better 
than in his letter to Herndon, July 10, 1848, on 
the way for a young man to rise in the world. The 
letter of June 22, also to Herndon, advised the 



28 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

formation among the young men of his acquaintance 
of a "Rough and Ready'' club, for pastime and the 
improvement of the "intellectual faculties." ^ It em- 
bodies a touch of political astuteness as well as 
sympathy for "the shrewd, wild bo}s about town"" 
in need of incentives to improvement. How suc- 
cinct in statement and worldly wisdom are the two 
letters to his step-brother, John D. Johnston, in 1851, 
on thriftlessness! " They remind one of the home- 
bred sense of Franklin, in his character of Poor 
Richard, who says : 

I never saw an oft-removed Tree, 

Nor yet an oft-removed Family, 

That throve so well as those that settled be. 

That Lincoln possessed something of the essay- 
ist's bent of mind is not difficult to believe. He 
was accustomed to generalize upon what he observed 
and knew. The few fragments he has left us as 
notes for a law lecture -^ and for a popular lecture on 
Niagara Falls, as well as his observations on the 
nature and objects of government, imply that at 
times he sought escape from the limitations of his 
profession. They reveal a mind of a contemplative 
cast. There is little indication that he veered toward 

I Page 295, Appendix. 2 Pages 296-298, Appendix. 

3 Page 330, Appendix. 



Intimations of a Public Career 29 

speculative thinking. He concerned himself by 
choice with concrete interests rather than with mat- 
ters of hypothesis. Practical life and the experi- 
ence of its institutions were at all times foremost 
in his thought. Like Socrates, his mental urge was 
ethical and spiritual before it was constructive. His 
ideals looked always in the direction of attainment, 
although his faculty was critical and interpretative 
rather than creative. 

The slight verse which Lincoln left was not prom- 
ising in this sense. He had a deep-born love for 
song, but in what he has left us of verse, there re- 
sides, outside of a certain abundant human sympathy 
and capacity to carry his thought toward a conclu- 
sion, no special sense for rhythm, no spontaneous 
impact of art. The honest, heartfelt verve is not 
supported Ijy a natixe flush of color or insight, or 
the rare gift of workmanship.^ 

His critical faculty remained dominant. This side 
of his mind commands our sincere respect. He had 
a natural aptitude for analysis and for generaliza- 
tion, but his environment, always tending to develop 
the practical side of his nature, furnished, during 
the years of his growth and professional education, 
no congenial atmosphere for the higher artistic i)er- 

I Pages 322-329, Appendix. 



30 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

ceptions. He had the necessary endowments of 
mind. He was nobly sagacious and imaginative, 
but he lacked the range of equipment to supply 
standards and method. His environment was such 
that he was drawn early and continuously in the 
direction of public speech. Even here he preferred 
discussion to oratory. Although circumstances drew 
him toward politics rather than to scholarship or 
literature, his mind continued dominant over his 
tongue. Fortunately, he early formed the habit of 
writing as well as speaking,^ and this habit, nour- 
ished by his love for reading and analysis, kept alive 
his penchant for criticism. 

It was Lincoln's capacity for clear, incisive, yet 
sympathetic criticism that gave him the preeminent 
place in the leadership of the great movement w^hich 
culminated in the overthrow of slavery and brought 
about the new order of American life. Glimpses of 
this form of his ability may be discerned in a lec- 
ture which he gave on Temperance before the Wash- 
ington Society, January 22, 1842. He condemned 
the old doctrine of temperance reform by "denun- 
ciations against dram-sellers and dram-drinkers." 
This method was "unjust, as well as impolitic." 
Drinking among men had a long history. Govern- 

I 'J'arbell, 1 :36. 2,"]. 



Intimations of a Public Career 31 

ment had provided it for soldiers and sailors ; physi- 
cians had prescribed it. Its manufacture had long 
been regarded as an honorable livelihood. It was 
known and acknowledged to lie the cause of much 
harm, "but none seemed to think the injury arose 
from the use of a bad thing, but from the abuse 
of a ver}' good thing." The failing of those who 
abused it was regarded as a misfortune, "not as a 
crime, or even as a disgrace." Why "assail, con- 
demn, or despise them" then? Another error of 
the old reformers was their contention that "habitual 
drunkards were utterly incorrigible" ... to be turned 
"adrift and damned without remedy." This attitude 
was "so cold-blooded and feelingless" ... it could 
not "enlist the enthusiasm of a popular cause." As 
applied to the cause of temperance reform, the 
doctrine of unpardonable sin is to be denied. It is 
better to teach. "While the lamp holds out to burn, 
the vilest sinner may return." The chief of sinners 
may become the chief apostle of a cause. For their 
task, "none are so w^ell educated." The world would 
be vastly benefited by a "total and final banishment 
from it of all intoxicating drinks." Three-fourths of 
mankind confess it, and the "rest acknowledge it in 
their hearts." 

There was the note of something prospecti\'e in 



32 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

this address. It was both sympathetic and con- 
structive in what it proposed. It contains passages 
prefiguring a simple yet lofty style. The theme of 
the address was temperance, but the occasion was 
the anniversary of Washington's natal day. Lin- 
coln closed his address with a reverent, well-spoken 
tribute to the memory of Washington — a tribute 
only slightly marred by its stilted, over-rhetorical 
language. 

Lincoln's eulogy on Henry Clay in 1852 sur- 
passes in style and literary merit anything he wrote 
in the intervening decade. As a composition it is 
in some respects admirable. The language is frank, 
well chosen, and interpretative. The address is well 
planned and well proportioned; the thought is not 
extravagant in any sense, but fairly represents the 
eloquence, the ideals, and personality of Clay. His 
service and character as a statesman are appraised, 
and Lincohi's understanding of these squared with 
his own views of the Union, of slavery, and of the 
doctrine of the Declaration of Independence. Lin- 
coln's writing during the ten years between the 
Temperance address and this eulogy include his 
speeches in Congress. He introduced the so- 
called "Spot Resolutions" in the House calling 
upon President Polk for specific information con- 



Intimations of a Public Career 33 

cerniiii^ the beginning of the Mexican \\'ar and 
throwing upon him the burden of an ethical jus- 
tification of that Avar. He addressed the House 
in an arraignment of the President for his war 
policy, which Lincoln regarded as indefensible. He 
supported a national policy of internal improve- 
ments in a speech which, like the speech and resolu- 
tions on the Mexican cjuestion, revealed breadth of 
legal knowledge and historical research. He deliv- 
ered also a party speech in support of Zachary 
Taylor for President which was not above the av- 
erage performance of this character at the time. 

There was nothing notable in these addresses. 
His congressional experience Lincoln seems to have 
regarded as a sort of obiter dictum in his profes- 
sional life and in no sense an introduction to a polit- 
ical career. 'Tt afforded him a close inspection of 
the complex machinery of the Federal government 
and its relation to that of the States," as Mr. John 
G. Nicolay wrote, and "it broadened immensely the 
horizon of his observation, and the sharp personal 
rivalries he noted at the center of the nation opened 
to him new lessons in the study of human nature." ^ 
He attracted in Congress the interest of Alexander 
H. Stephens, who said of him: "Mr. Lincoln was 

I Nicolay, "Abraham Lincoln." pp. 89, 90. 



34 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

careless as to his manners and awkward in his 
speech, but possessed a strong, clear, vigorous mind. 
He always attracted and riveted the attention of 
the House when he spoke. His manner of speech 
as well as of thought was original. He had no 
model. He was a man of strong convictions, and 
what Carlyle would have called an earnest man. He 
abounded in anecdote. He illustrated everything 
he was talking about by an anecdote, always ex- 
ceedingly apt and pointed; and socially he always 
kept his company in a roar of laughter." In view 
of the friendship between Lincoln and Stephens as 
fellow Whigs at this time, and the subsequent di- 
vergence of their political careers, it is interesting 
to record Lincoln's letter to Herndon, written from 
Washington, February 2, 1848, giving his earliest 
impression of Stephens : 

Dear William : I just take my pen to say that 
Mr. Stephens, of Georgia, a little, slim, pale-faced, con- 
sumptive man, with a voice like Logan's, has just con- 
cluded the very best speech of an hour's length I ever 
heard. My old withered dry eyes are full of tears yet. 
If he writes it out anything like he delivered it, our 
people shall see a good many copies of it. 
Yours truly, 

A. Lincoln. 



Intimations of a Public Career 35 

Lincoln's partnership with Herndon, following a 
brief association with Judge Stephen T. Logan 
(1841-1843), began in 1843. This last partner- 
ship continued actively until Lincoln's election to 
the Presidency. The period from 1843 i-^i^til the 
great debates with Douglas in 1858, interrupted 
only by his term in Congress, was preeminently that 
of Lincoln the lawyer. His chief intellectual con- 
cern during this distincti\'ely professional period 
was the preparation and trial of cases. The extent 
of his service in causes before the Supreme Court 
of the State w^as probaljly not surpassed by any of 
his contemporaries of the Illinois bar.^ His partner, 
Herndon, we are told, was one of the most widely 
read men in Springfield. An authority tells us that, 
at this time, "Herndon's chief extravagance was 
buying books." ^ He kept the office sup^died with 
late volumes on a variety of subjects, a fact which 
greatly stimulated Lincoln's reading and conversa- 
tion. His reading was stimulated also by Mrs. Lin- 
coln and by Newton Bateman," State Superintend- 
ent of Education, wdiose cultural attainments en- 
gaged Lincoln's interest and f riendsliip. 



1 Richards, "Abraham Lincohi, the Lawyer-Statesman," 
Chap. II and Appendix. 

2 Rankin, p. 120. 

3 Arnold, "Abraham Lincohi," p. 176. 



36 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

An important contribution of first-hand infor- 
mation on the sul)ject of Lincohi's personality and 
intellectual habits during this period is given by 
Henry B. Rankin in his "Personal Recollections of 
Abraham Lincoln" (1916). The authcjr of this 
interesting volume of reminiscences, who read law 
in the office of Lincoln and Herndon. tells us of 
Lincoln's introduction to Walt Whitman's Leaves 
of Grass, which Herndon added to the office 
library. The merits of the poem aroused highly 
spirited discussion and diversity of opinion between 
the "office students and Air. Herndon." 

Later, quite a surprise occurred when we found that 
the Whitman poetry and our discussions had been 
engaging Lincoln's silent attention. After the rest of 
us had finished our criticism of some peculiar verses 
and of Whitman in general . . . and had resumed our 
usual duties or had departed, Lincoln, who during the 
criticisms had been apparently in the unapproachable 
depths of one of his glum moods of meditative silence 
. . . took up Leaves of Grass for his first reading 
of it. After half an hour or more devoted to it he 
turned back to the first pages of it, and to our general 
surprise, began to read aloud. Other office work was 
discontinued by us all while he read with sympathetic 
emphasis verse after verse. His rendering revealed a 



Intimations of a Public Career 37 

charm of new life in Whitman's versification. Save 
for a few comments on some broad allusions that 
Lincoln suggested could have been veiled, or left out, 
he commended the new poet's verses for their virility, 
freshness, unconventional sentiments, and unique form 
of expression, and claimed that Whitman gave promise 
of a new school of poetry. 

Speaking in general of Lincoln's literary likings, 
Mr. Rankin continues : 

He enjoyed j^articularly Holmes, Theodore Parker, 
Beecher, Whittier, Lowell, the elder x\bbott, and Haw- 
thorne. He cared little for fiction, though Uncle 
Tom's Cabin moved him deeply while reading it. His 
literary taste was keen and delicate, and his zest for 
the best in current literature was unerring to recog- 
nize and appreciate beauty of style and strength of 
personality in a writer's method of expressing thought. 
His likes and dislikes in literature were quick, strong, 
and- positive. A few glances, a sentence read here 
and there, a hasty turning of leaves, sufficed with him 
for a decision to toss the book aside, or make it his 
own as he found leisure to read it. Lincoln was an 
earnest seeker of the best in thottght and form in 
literature.^ 

This method of determining his "likes and dis- 

I Rankin, pp. 129. 130. 



38 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

likes in literature" calls to mind Herndon's account 
of Lincoln's swift estimate of a biography of Burke : 

In 1856 I purchased ... a Life of Edmund Burke. 
I have forgotten now who the author was. . . . One 
morning Lincoln came into the office and, seeing the 
book in my hands, inquired what I was reading. . . . 
Taking it in his hand he threw himself down on the 
office sofa and hastily ran over its pages, reading a 
little here and there. At last he closed and threw it 
on the table with the exclamation, "No, I've read 
enough of it. It's like all the others. Biographies as 
generally written are not only misleading, but false. 
The author of this life of Burke makes a wonderful 
hero out of his subject. He magnifies his perfections 
— if he had any — and suppresses his imperfections. 
He is so faithful in his zeal and so lavish in praise of 
his every act that one is almost driven to believe that 
Burke never made a mistake or a failure in his life. 
. . . History is not history unless it is the truth." 

It was of course Lincoln's misfortune not to have 
known the field of biography beyond Weems's 
Washington, and probably INIarion's, and some 
campaign biographies. He had read also a life of 
Clay, and may have read Franklin's Autobiography.^ 
He read the biographical histories of Abbott. Of 

I Holland, "Life of Lincoln," p. 31. 



Intimations of a Public Career 39 

such books he would easily discover the uncritical 
character. His keen judgment and taste for the 
best would detect the inadequacy of such books as 
interpretations of the men and events they described. 
His education had enabled him to estimate these 
juvenile performances at their value, but had not 
been inclusive enough to profit by biographical lit- 
erature based upon competent research, carefully 
balanced evidence, and disinterested purpose. 

It is natural that we should desire to reconstruct 
the processes of Lincoln's education and his acqui- 
sition of good style, but the effort to do this with 
the completeness to which research aspires is baffled 
at points for lack of evidence. It may be safe to 
conclude that from his admission to the bar to his 
re-entrance into politics in 1854, Lincoln devoted 
himself assiduously to reading and study. His part- 
nership with such accomplished lawyers as Major 
Stuart and Judge Logan, from 1837 to 1843, ^^' 
forded him an unusual opportunity to perfect him- 
self in the principles and practice of law. But when 
in the latter year, upon his own initiative, he headed 
the new firm of Lincoln and Herndon, his cultural 
interests made rapid advancement. His acquaint- 
ance with literature now widened and was main- 
tained for the rest of his life. His tastes were ver- 



40 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

satile, he was conscious of the necessity of education 
to a successful career, and he had already developed 
that capacity for independent investigation and judg- 
ing of facts which scholarship has accorded him so 
freely. 

As early as 1839, according to Joseph Jefferson's 
autobiography, Lincoln appeared before the city 
council of Springfield and persuaded that body to 
relax its puritanic attitude toward the theatre and 
theatrical representations in that city. Mr. Jefferson 
says that when his company came against the ob- 
struction of the city ordinance, "a young lawyer 
called on the managers. He had heard of the injus- 
tice, and offered, if they would place the matter in 
his hands, to have the license taken off, declaring 
that he only wanted to see fair play, and would 
accept no fee whether he failed or succeeded. The 
case was brought before the council. . . . He han- 
dled the subject with tact, skill, and humor, tracing 
the history of the drama from the time when Thespis 
acted in a cart, to the stage of to-day. . . . He now 
lies buried in Springfield, under a monument com- 
memorating his greatness and his virtues, — and his 
name was Abraham Lincoln."^ 

Lincoln must be conceded the ability to master 

I Joseph Jefferson's Aufobiograpliy, pp. 28-30- 



Intimations of a Public Career 41 

the literature of the subjects before him, and to as- 
similate the essential details of the problem within 
it. Behind this power was a native thirst for 
knowledge, a love for the best that had been said 
and thought in the world, "a sheer desire to see 
things as they are." This "self-educated"' man 
clothed his mind with the materials of genuine cul- 
ture. Call it genius or talent, the process of his 
attainment was that described by Professor Emerton 
in speaking of the education of Erasmus: "He was 
no longer at school, but was simply educating him- 
self by the only pedagogical method which ever yet 
produced any results anywhere, — namely, by the 
method of his own tireless energy in continuous 
study and practice." ^ 

I Emerton, "Desiderius Erasmus," p. 22. 

Lincoln's view of self-education is indicated in his letters to 
J. T. Thornton and J. M. Brockman, December 2, 1858, and 
September 25, i860, respectively, the latter of which is to be 
found on page 303, Appendix. 



CHAPTER III 

PRELUDE TO THE GREAT DEBATE 

It must not be. There is no power in Venice 

Can alter a decree established ; 

'T will be recorded for a precedent, 

And many an error by the same example 

Will rush into the state. It cannot be. 

— Shakespeare. 

Lincoln steadfastly resisted the temptations to 
climb upward by superficial means. He would not 
substitute cant for genuine speech. His native bent 
was toward the sincere and logical. His proposi- 
tions and his ideals sought to over-reach the contin- 
gent and apparent and face the tests of general 
truth. This sincere trait of his character shows 
itself clearly in his second contest with Douglas at 
Peoria, October, 1854. After his opponent had 
spoken for three hours, until past five o'clock, and 
had been received with manifest marks of apprecia- 
tion, Lincoln requested the crowd to return after 
supper to listen to his reply. As an inducement to 
the people to hear him through, as they had done in 
Douglas's case, he consented to give Douglas an 
hour for rebuttal. He announced to the reassem- 

42 



Prelude to the Great Debate 43 

bled audience that he would speak on the Missouri 
Compromise, and said : 

As I desire to present my own connected view of 
this subject, my remarks will not be specifically an 
answer to Judge Douglas ; yet, as I proceed, the main 
points he has presented will arise, and will receive 
such respectful attention as I may be able to give them. 
... I do not propose to question the patriotism or to 
assail the motives of any man or class of men, but 
rather to confine myself to the naked merits of the 
question. I also wish to be no less than national in 
all the positions I may take, and whenever I take 
ground which others have thought, or may think, nar- 
row, sectional, or dangerous to the Union, I hope to 
give a reason which will appear sufficient, at least to 
some, why I think differently. 

And as this subject is no less than part and parcel 
of the larger general question of domestic slavery, I 
wish to make and keep the distinction between the 
existing institution and the extension of it so broad 
and clear that no honest man can misunderstand me, 
and no dishonest one misrepresent me. 

These words represent Lincoln's propensity to 
reduce a question to its ultimate ground of validity. 
Like Burke, he was disposed to uncover the actual 
philosophy upon which the issue rested. 



44 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

The Peoria speech is a long one. Likewise it has 
outstanding importance. It marks Lincohi's re-en- 
trance into the arena of political debate and aspira- 
tion. This course was precipitated b}- the passage 
of Senator Douglas's bill through Congress in ]\lay, 
1854, to permit the people of the Nebraska Terri- 
tory to determine by popular vote whether they 
should enter the Union with or without slavery. 
This measure had also repealed the AIis.souri Com- 
promise of 1820, which had forbidden slavery north 
of 36' 30'' north latitude. The unpopularity of this 
repeal in Illinois lost Douglas many of his former 
friends. His discomfiture in Chicago, where the 
crowd hissed him as he attempted to speak in defense 
of his measure, w^as followed by a speech at Spring- 
field, where Lincoln was chosen to answer him. 
Lincoln's speech surprised even his closest friends 
by its great force and completeness, but no copy of 
it was preserved. The Peoria speech twelve days 
later is taken to be a repetition of it. This speech, 
which Lincoln wrote out after its delivery, is highly 
significant for the reason that it contains the ground 
argument A\hich he opposed to Douglas in the debate 
four years later. It was the prelude to that great 
intellectual duel which was to determine whether 
Lincoln or Douglas should become President of the 



Prelude to the Great Debate 45 

United States, and which nf the Iwu political phi- 
losophies, nationalism dr state's rights, shonld 
triumph in the country. 

At Peoria, Lincoln maintained two cardinal doc- 
trines which Douglas never successfully combated, 
around which the sentiment of the nation opposed 
to slavery consolidated as the basis of the new Re- 
publican party. These doctrines were : 

I. That the Kansas-Nebraska act was wrong 
because it violated a just compromise and permitted 
the extension of an institution which in itself was 
"monstrous" and "unjust." 

II. That Douglas's contention that the act was 
an assertion of the "sacred right of self-govern- 
ment" was fallacious, because, although the doctrine 
of self-government "is absolutely and eternally 
right," the act in question had no application to the 
principle of self-government because the negro is a 
man. 

Of its arguments which Lincoln later employed 
against Douglas in the great senatorial campaign 
were these : 

If he is not a man, in that case he who is a man 
may as a matter of self-government do what he pleases 
with him. But if the negro is a man, is it not to that 
extent a total destruction of self-government to say 



46 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

that he too shall not govern himself ? When the white 
man governs himself, that is self-government ; but 
when he governs himself and also governs another 
man, that is more than self-government — that is des- 
potism. 

Douglas had insisted, and very logically, that by 
the terms of the new legislation, it was a matter of 
indifference to him whether in the new territory 
slavery should be voted up or voted down. To this 
attitude Lincoln replied : 

This declared indifference, but, as I mlist think, 
real, covert zeal, for the spread of slavery, I cannot 
but hate. ... I hate it because it deprives our repub- 
lican example of its just influence in the world ; enables 
the enemies of free institutions with plausibility to 
taunt us as hypocrites ; causes the real friends of free- 
dom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it 
forces so many good men among ourselves into an 
open war with the very fundamental principles of 
civil liberty, criticising the Declaration of Independ- 
ence, and insisting that there is no right principle of 
action but self-interest. 

As Lincoln's propositions against an economic 
aristocracy were unanswerable in the nineteenth 
century, they state the case of democracy against 
autocratic government with equal irresistibility 



Prelude to the Great Debate 47 

to-day. At Peoria he said: "What [ do say is that 
no man is good enough to govern another man 
without that other's consent. . . . The master not 
only governs the slave without his consent, but he 
governs him by a set of rules altogether different 
from those which he prescribes for himself. Allow 
all the governed an equal voice in the government, 
and that, and that only, is self-government." This 
complete description of responsible government re- 
quired a great struggle to make it a fact. It is inter- 
esting to compare Lincoln's dictum with that of a 
great English statesman of the mediaeval age, pro- 
phetic of British democracy of a later time : "What 
concerns all should by all be approved."^ In these 
days it reminds one also of Immanuel Kant's defi- 
nition of "constitutional freedom, as the right of 
every citizen to have to obey no other law than 
that to which he has given his consent or approval,'' ^ 
a definition of which his own countrymen as yet are 
ignorant or are powerless to enjoy. The case of 
Belgium and certain other countries strikingly call 
to mind Kant's corollary proposition: "No State 
shall intermeddle by force with the constitution or 

1 Edward I : Quod tangit omnes, ab omnibus comprebetur. 
Translated above. 

2 "Essay on Eternal Peace," translated by Hastic, Boston 
edn., p. 137. 



48 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

government of another State."^ We shall see, in 
the next chapter, how Lincoln, in debate with Doug- 
las, extended his conception of the democratic prin- 
ciple by a telling exposition of absolutism. 

Meantime it is important to sketch the story of 
his great utterances and the character of their con- 
tent as they lead up to that point. The closely rea- 
soned argument of the Peoria speech drove the 
oratory of Douglas to cover. The senator asked 
and received from Lincoln an agreement that 
neither of them should make another speech during 
the campaign. Lincoln (who alone did not violate 
the agreement) had shown his capacity to burrow 
deeper than his opponent, to reason from principle 
rather than from expediency, and he disclosed the 
fact that he did not go before the public without 
having mastered the history of the question in 
debate. Unlike the method of Douglas, he gave 
piquancy also to what he said by the use of apt quo- 
tation and literary allusion. In this characteristic 
he was never pedantic, but apparently spontaneous. 
The effect was an appropriate reinforcement of the 
facts and statements he employed. The Peoria 
speech exhibits no notable literary content beyond 
a sound analysis of the points in controversy. 

I Ibid., p. "71. 



Prelude to the Great Debate 49 

It shows a wider reading, however, than any of 
Douglas's speeches revealed. From Pope's Essay 
on Alan he employed the familiar aphorism, "Fools 
rush in where angels fear to tread.." From Hamlet 
he used the line, "It hath [has] no relish of salva- 
tion in it." Macbeth supplied him with "Cancel and 
tear in [into] pieces," and "bloody hand" is em- 
bedded in a well-conceived allusion to the Macbeth 
incident of the murder of Duncan.' Two para- 
graphs before, he adapts biblical phraseology to the 
national dishonor of slavery : "Our republican robe 
is soiled and trailed in the dust. Let us repurify it. 
Let us turn and wash it white in the spirit, if not in 
the blood, of the Revolution." - He uses the meta- 
phors "Behemoth of danger" and "Genius of Dis- 
cord," biljlical and classical allusions respectively, 
easily identified. He adapts Wendell Phillips's 
words about Napoleon in characterizing the Ne- 
braska act as "grand, gloomy, and peculiar." He 
indicates his dictionary habit by c|Uoting Webster's 
definition of the verb "to compromise," uses scrip- 
tural language frequently, quotes from the Declara- 
tion of Independence, and accepts Douglas's chal- 
lenge to explicate the slavery question by reference 
to the attitude of the Revolutionary fathers.'^ This 

I Macbeth, II. 2; V. i. 2 Revelation, 7:14. 

3 Extract from Peoria speech, Page 222, Appendix. 



50 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

same challenge formed a part of his discussion six 
years afterward in the Cooper Institute Address. 
In connection with the Peoria speech, Lincoln's 
letters to George Robertson, August 15, 1855,^ and 
to Joshua Speed, x*\ugust 24 of the same year,- are 
of interest. The first indicates the country's aban- 
donment of the spirit of the Fathers toward peace- 
ful emancipation, the method Lincoln espoused. It 
points out the fixed temper of the advocates of 
slavery, and defines the paramount political prob- 
lem of the time : "Can we as a nation continue 
together permanently — forever — half slave and half 
free? The problem," he writes, "is too mighty for 
me. May God in his mercy superintend the solu- 
tion." Months before this letter, this root idea of 
Lincoln's analysis of the slavery problem was en- 
gendering in his mind. Traveling the circuit after 
the Peoria address, Lincoln on one occasion occu- 
pied a room with Judge Dickey. Before retiring 
they had sat up late discussing the slavery question. 
The judge woke up early the next morning and 
found Lincoln "half sitting up in bed." "Dickey," 
he said, "I tell you this nation cannot exist half 
slave and half free." "Oh, Lincoln," said I, "go to 
sleep.""' Lincoln was bringing to birth the funda- 

I Page 298, Appendi.x. 2 Page 300, Appendi.x. 

3 Tarbell, 1 :288. 



Prelude 'to the Great Debate 51 

mental proposition which in three years was to take 
on the final and startling form he gave it in the first 
paragraph of the celebrated Springfield speech. 

The second letter m^kes it clear that Lincoln had 
reached a philosophical understanding of what in 
the average man aroused Ijut little more than a pre- 
disposition to one side or the other, unaccompanied 
by thorough-going conviction or clear insight. To 
many at the time he gave the impression of unsafe 
radicalism. Possibly there were those who regarded 
him as touched with the spirit of fanaticism they 
were accustomed to associate with over-ardent re- 
formers. To us, at this distance, he seems, rather, 
to have possessed a clear discernment of the ethical 
forces ever active in human nature and civilization 
whereby the race is pulled upward. He grasped the 
infinite spiritual dissonance of one man's, or set of 
men's, assumption of control over another for selfish 
purposes. How^ could one man, he reasoned, by 
presuming to own another as property, regard him- 
self as superior to the other in a commonwealth 
which presupposed the equality of all men and in 
which public opinion was the totality of all men's 
viewpoints ? 

"Our government," he said, after the Buchanan 
election in 1856, "rests in public opinion. Whoever 



52 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

can change public opinion, can change the govern- 
ment, practically, just so much. Public opinion on 
any subject always has a 'central idea' from which 
all minor thoughts radiate. That 'central idea' in 
our political public opinion at the beginning was, 
and until recently has continued to be, 'the equality 
of men.' And although it has always submitted 
patiently to whatever of inequality there seemed to 
be as matter of actual necessity, its constant working 
has been a steady progress towards the practical 
equality of all men"^ 

By 1856 the anti-slavery sentiment of the country 
had gathered such momentum that it demanded a 
new vehicle of expression. The old Whig party had 
proved inadequate for this purpose, and in that year 
the Republican party, embracing anti-slavery ele- 
ments from the older parties, sprang into being. 
Illinois was one of the first states to form an organi- 
zation of the new political faith, and Lincoln, leaving 
the ^^^higs, united himself with it. He was already 
well known in the State as an effective public 
speaker; and there were those who regarded him 
as more powerful than Douglas, the acknowledged 
leader of his party in State and nation. Lincoln's 
name had not been placed on the program of the 

I Republican banquet, Chicago, Dec. 10, 1856. 



Prelude to the Great Debate 53 

Republican State convention which met at Bloom- 
ington, May 29, 1856, but he was called for by the 
crowd, and responded in what is now known as 
"The Lost Speech." The newspaper reporters, 
among them Joseph ?*Iedill of the Chicago Tribune, 
rapt b)' Lincoln's wonderful eloquence, failed to 
take notes on the speech, and it was not reproduced 
in the reports of the convention. H. C. Whitne}-, 
an attorney who had ridden the circuit with Lin- 
coln, was thoughtful enough, however, to make full 
memoranda of the remarkable address, and forty 
years afterward, at the instance of Miss Ida Tar- 
bell, expanded his notes into "The Lost Speech" as 
we have it.^ 

At Bloomington, Lincoln, alluding to the advan- 
tage accruing to slavery through the repeal of the 
Missouri Compromise, declared prophetically that 
"unless popular opinion makes itself very strongly 
felt, and a change is made in our present course, 
blood will flow on account of Nebraska, and 
brother's hand will be raised against brother!" He 
indicated his familiarity with the attitude of the 
Fathers toward slavery by quoting from the first 
draft of the Declaration the condemnatory phrases 
which they omitted from the finished instrument. He 

I Tarbell, 1 :296. 



54 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

reviewed the history of the land cessions of the 
original States and of the subsequent effort to intro- 
duce slavery into Illinois. The ready knowledge he 
employed contains abundant evidence of his habit 
of devoting himself to research as a means of arriv- 
ing at convictions and their proper support. 

He spoke of slavery as a "moral and political 
wrong;" referred to Douglas's reasoning as the "use 
of a sort of bastard logic, or noisy assumption," in 
order to prepare the public mind for the gradual 
"encroachment of the Moloch of slavery." He con- 
ceded the necessity of a fugitive slave law because 
it was so "nominated in the bond."^ He applied 
to Douglas, Hamlet's words : "Where the offence 
lies, there let the [great] axe fall." He spoke of 
certain persons in Kansas as "the cat's-paws" of 
the authors of the Nebraska act, a phrase he later 
used at a Chicago banquet " and originally found in 
Aesop's Fables. He adapted four lines from a song 
by T. H. Bailey." and alluded to Madame Roland's 

1 Merchant of Venice, IV. i. 

2 Chicago. Dec. lO, 1856. He quoted also from King Lear: 
"He's a shelled peascod" ["That's a shell'd peascod"]. 

3 Thomas H. Bailey, an English poet (1797-1839). The 
original lines are : 

Oh, no, we never mention her, 
Her name is never heard ; 
, My lips are now forbid to speak 

That once familiar word. 



Prelude to the Great Debate 55 

famous exclamation when he declared that "mon- 
strous crimes are committed in its [slavery's] name 
by persons collectively which they would not dare 
to commit as individuals." He made a telling ref- 
erence to Lord Mansfield's decision in reference to 
slavery in the Somerset case. He likened the insti- 
tution to "the Juggernaut, the great Hindu idol;" 
referred to a "black-letter law book'' in which he 
had read that a slave was "legally not a person but a 
thing," and quoted "Madison's avowal that 'the word 
slave ought not to appear in the Constitution.' " In 
this speech Lincoln made frequent quotations from 
the Bible, as was his wont. In his appeal to the 
audience not to "mistake that the ballot is stronger 
than the bullet," we have a reminiscence of Bulwer- 
Lytton's oft-quoted, "The pen is mightier than the 
sword." The climax of the "Lost Speech" is re- 
ported by Mr. Whitney in these words : "We will 
say to the Southern disunionists, — We won't go out 
of the Union, and you shan't!!!" Lour years 
later Lincoln wrote similar words to his old Con- 
gressional friend, A. H. Stephens, as follows : "Let 
me say right here that only unanimous consent of 
all of the states can dissolve this Union. We will 
not secede and you shall not."^ 

I Tracy, "Unpublished Letters of Abraham Lincoln," p. 125. 



56 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

From 1856 to 1858 Lincoln's writings consist for 
the most part of personal letters, court arguments, 
and political speeches. Of the latter, the fragment 
of a speech dated October i, 1856, is probably rep- 
resentative of the fifty or more speeches he delivered 
during the Fremont campaign but which were not 
preserved. In this Fragment on Sectionalism he 
makes a characteristically mathematical analysis of 
the issue between Buchanan and Fremont in their 
race for the Presidency. He rebuts the charge of 
sectionalism brought against those opposed to the 
spread of slavery. He explained the Sonth's pecun- 
iary interest in the extension of the institution and 
the North's opposition to it on moral principle. On 
June 26 of the next year, replying at Springfield to 
Douglas's effort to calm his constituents who were 
agitated over the Dred Scott decision. Lincoln argued 
that the Supreme Court had reached an erroneous 
conclusion and had not yet "quite established a set- 
tled doctrine for the country." He called attention, 
also, to the fallacy in Douglas's contention that the 
authors of the Declaration of Independence, instead 
of implying that negroes were included in the doc- 
trine of all men's equality, meant "British subjects 
born and residing on this continent being equal to 
British subjects born and residing in Great Britain." 



Prelude to the Great Debate 57 

Such an interpretation, he pointed out, would ex- 
clude the "French, Germans, and other white people 
of the world," all of whom would be "gone to pot" ^ 
— an expression he may have picked up from current 
phraseolog}'. 

On the contrary, argued Lincoln, "the authors of 
that notable instrument intended to include all men," 
not "to declare all men equal in all respects ... in 
color, size, intellect, moral development, or social 
capacity," but "equal in certain inalienable rights, 
among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness. . . . They meant simply to declare the 
right, so that enforcement of it might follow as fast 
as circumstances should permit. 

"They meant to set up a standard maxim for free 
society which should be familiar to all and revered by 
all ; constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and 
even though never perfectly attained, constantly ap- 
proximated, and thereby constantly spreading and 
deepening its influence and augmenting the happiness 
and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere. 
... Its authors meant it to be — as, thank God, it is 
now proving itself — a stumbling-block to all those who 
in after times might seek to turn a free people back into 
the hateful paths of despotism." 

I An English expression as old, at least, as the fifteenth 
century. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATE 

A man with a clear head, a good heart, and an honest under- 
standing, will always write well. — Southey. 

The hour of emancipation must come; but whether it will be 
brought on by the generous energies of our own minds, or by 
the bloody scenes of St. Domingo, is a leaf of our history not 
yet turned over. The Almighty has no attributes which can 
take sides with us in such a contest. — Jefferson. 

In 1858 came the great debate between Lincoln 
and Douglas which the events of at least four years 
had been generating. The immediate occasion was 
the campaign for United States senator. From early 
life the two men had been thrown into political oppo- 
sition. Both were "self-made" and ambitious for a 
public career.^ Douglas began life as a Democrat, 
Lincoln as a Whig. Douglas mounted steadily up- 
w^ard as a Democrat, while Lincoln united his for- 
tune with the Republicans. Douglas had no hostile 
feelings toward slavery; Lincoln early determined 
to do what he could to limit its hold upon the coun- 
try. Both men studied law and both enjoyed public 

I For Lincoln's own parallel between himself and Douglas, 
sec Browne, p. 188. 

58 



The Lincoln-Douglas Debate 59 

speech — albeit from different angles. Douglas was 
l)old, dramatic, and winsome; in speech, facile and 
strategic, ardent and persuasive. He was without 
humor, and was a master of sophistry.^ Lincoln 
was modest, angular, and at first sight, unprepos- 
sessing ; - in speech, he ranged from the dry to the 
philosophic and inspired. He, loved humor, and was 
keen to detect a fallacy in argument. Both were 
men of dignity, strength, and striking personality. 
They began public life as members of the State leg- 
islature. Both served in the national House of Rep- 
resentatives, Lincoln entering the House in 1846 as 
Douglas was leaving it for the Senate. Twelve years 
later they were rival candidates for the upper cham- 
ber, and the debates were their appeal to the people 
for the support of their respective contentions. Their 
disagreement over the Kansas-Nebraska act brought 
the supreme issue of the time to such a focus in the 
public consciousness that the two disputants emerged 
from the contest the most dynamic and brilliant 
leaders in the political field. 

These debates are not literature of the imagina- 
tion, but of the forum. Like the philippics of De- 

1 Blaine's "Twenty Years in Congress," I, chap, vii, contains 
an excellent comparative study of the two men. 

2 Compare Mrs. John A. Logan's "Reminiscences of a 
Soldier's Wife," p. 6i. Compare Lord Charnwood's "Abraham 
Lincoln," pp. 13s, 134. 



60 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

mosthenes and the invectives of Cicero, they are 
the products of a historic occasion. They recall the 
memorable opposition of ideas which made Hamil- 
ton and Jefferson the protagonists of divergent polit- 
ical schools. They bring to mind the forensic col- 
lision of Webster with Hayne and Calhoun or the 
spirited political rivalry which divided Clay and 
Jackson. Under a government where public opinion 
is the court of final appeal, such a contest of ideas 
is the open road to stable government, the procedure 
that invokes majority rule. The debate stirred the 
feelings of the people to a higher level of thought 
and virtue. Lincoln's matchless affirmations against 
human slavery were a solid contribution to the lit- 
erature of democracy. At points he rises to those 
conceptions of human rights and freedom which 
are of permanent interest. These passages are in- 
spired with high sincerity, emotion, and insight. 
They do not appear to possess the conscious art of 
form nor the "veiled rhythm" of literary prose, 
though Lincoln developed and possessed a sense for 
both of these elements of literary expression. His 
speeches in reply to Douglas are not made up at any 
point of the materials of creative imagination. But 
they do contain the spirit of reality, which, it is well 
said, "has become recognized as the one vital element 



The Lincoln-Douglas Debate 61 

of significant art."^ They indicate the direction 
in which Lincoln's native taste loved to assert itself 
— the conscious direction of his profoitnder feelings 
clothed in the garb of beautiful Vvords. They have 
little or no accent of the "grand style" such as lifts 
some of Burke's speeches to the dignity of literature, 
but on the side of political democracy or government 
by consent, they have "the quality of the seer, the 
power himself to see what has happened and to make 
what he has seen clear to the vision of others." - 
Outside of these loftier passages, Lincoln's argu- 
ments are concerned with statements of a personal 
nature called out by his antagonist, to matters of 
historical significance, and to the legal or practical 
aspects of the policies in dispute. 

Lincoln's final argument at Alton. October 15, 
contains a very good summary of both sides of the 
debate. Four months before he had opened his cam- 
paign for the senatorship with a well-known and 
carefully prepared speech before the Republican 
state convention at Springfield. That convention 
had adopted a resolution "that Abraham Lincoln is 
the first and only choice of the Republicans of Illi- 
nois for the United States Senate as the successor 

1 W. C. Brownell, "Criticism," p. 63. 

2 Roosevelt, "History as Literature," p. 12. 



62 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

of Stephen A. Douglas." Lincoln opened up his 
address with the famous paragraph in which he 
declared: "A house divided against itself cannot 
stand. I believe this government cannot endure per- 
manently, half slave and half free. . . . Either the 
opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread 
of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest 
in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinc- 
tion, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall 
become alike lawful in all the states, old as well as 
new, North as well as South." ^ Lincoln had pon- 
dered this general proposition for three years. He 
had at last linked it up with a "universally known 
figure expressed in simple language as universally 
well known," that would "strike home to the minds 
of men," and "raise them up to the peril of the 
times." " This paragraph was done in excellent 
prose. It reduced into single perspective the past 
and the future of the slavery question in America. 
Politically, too, it was strategic, even though Lin- 
coln's intimate friends considered it hazardous to 
his prospects in the campaign.^ As they predicted, 

1 Pages 223-233, Appendix. 

2 Herndon and Weik. II -.398. 

3 Ibid., 399, 400. Herndon calls attention to the "similarity in 
figure and thought in the opening lines" of Lincoln's Spring- 
field speech and Webster's reply to Hayne. Lincoln wrote 
to O. P. Hall to interpret the "house-divided-against-itself" 
paragraph. 



The Lincoln-Douglas Debate 63 

Douglas seized upon it as his opponent's attempt to 
inspire sectional hatred in the country. As Lin- 
coln foresaw, it centered tlie i)eople"s attention upon 
the ultimate meaning of the issue between him and 
Douglas, and definitely ahgned party opinion for the 
supreme decision of America upon the "uhimate 
extinction" of a system dishonorable to her civiliza- 
tion. Lincoln amplified this fundamental thesis by 
maintaining that events indicated a "preconcert" of 
Douglas and other Democratic leaders to nationalize 
slavery. These events were "compounded of the 
Nebraska doctrine and the Dred Scott decision." 
Only another Supreme Court decision was needed to 
restrain a State from forbidding sla\'ery, and Doug- 
las's indifference to whether slavery were voted up 
or voted down w^as tending to prepare the public 
mind to support such a possible decision. 

The effect was crucial. The Springfield speech 
threw upon Douglas the necessity of defending his 
Kansas-Nebraska policy in the face of its negation 
by the Supreme Court. The climax was reached 
at Freeport, August 27. At this debate Lincoln pro- 
pounded to Douglas four critical questions. The 
second of these was decisive : "Can the people of a 
United States Territory, in any lawful way, against 
the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude 



64 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a 
State constitution?" To this question, framed with 
"malice aforethought," Douglas replied: "I answer 
emphatically, as Lincoln has heard me answer a hun- 
dred times from every stump in Illinois, that in my 
opinion the people of a Territory can, by lawful 
means, exclude slavery from their limits prior to the 
formation of a State constitution." Naturally, the 
effect was disastrous to Douglas's logic. He had 
unwittingly permitted himself to be lured into the 
awkward position of trying to ride two horses going 
in opposite directions. He had maintained that Lin- 
coln, by arguing against the Dred Scott decision, was 
disloyal to the Supreme Court. His answer to Lin- 
coln's interrogatory disclosed to his Southern sup- 
porters that he likewise was an impossible exponent 
of the judicial doctrine which had given the hope of 
fresh vitality to their "peculiar institution." Lincoln 
had eclipsed his opponent's ambitions for the Presi- 
dency. That star was moving in the direction of his 
own fortune. 

The debate was a well-staged and ably conducted 
battle in political dialectics. In the effort to disclose 
the proper policy of government toward the para- 
mount question, each of the two men sought to 
mould public opinion to his side of the controversy. 



The Lincoln-Douglas Debate 65 

Lincoln felt that he was the spokesman of an ad- 
vancing civilization. Douglas was not so fortunate 
in his theme. He was defending ideals destined to 
be abolished. He not only held by the act of 1854 
and by the adjudication which rendered that act null 
and void ; he supported slavery by maintaining that 
Lincoln stood for dead uniformity of institutions in 
a country whose diversity of climate and resources 
called for variegation in laws and social organiza- 
tion. He believed that the Government and its cit- 
izenship were for "white men and their posterity 
forever;" that those who opposed the extension of 
slavery would make the negro socially and politically 
. the equal of the white man — the prelude, he thought, 
to the amalgamation of the two races. He antici- 
pated nothing with respect to the moral wrong of 
slavery, offered no objection to its spread under his 
hypothesis of democracy, and saw in it no economic 
injustice to the white man. He indicated no for- 
ward look toward its ultimate disappearance in ac- 
cord with the tendency of the age, and totally mis- 
conceived the "covert" language of the Constitution 
in its allusion to slaves. His interpretation of equal- 
ity as contemplated by the Declaration was shifty, 
and his contention that, irrespective of the Supreme 
Court decision, the people of a Territory, by "un- 



66 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

friendly legislation," could prevent the introduction 
of slavery, was fatal to law and order. 

Lincoln's views ran squarely counter to this phi- 
losophy of politics. He would repudiate the prin- 
ciple of the "divine right of kings" and erect in its 
stead the "common right of humanity." He repeated 
at Alton what he had previously declared to be his 
view of the Declaration of Independence^ on the 
question of equality, and discussed the attitude of the 
framers of the Constitution toward slavery. 

I entertain the opinion, upon evidence sufficient to 
my mind, that the fathers of this government placed 
that institution [slavery] where the public mind did 
rest in the belief that it was in course of ultimate ex- 
tinction. Let me ask why they made provision that the 
source of slavery — the African slave-trade — should be 
cut off at the end of twenty years? Why did they make 
provision that in all new territory we owned at that 
time, "slavery should be forever inhibited ? Why stop 
its source in one direction and cut off its source in an- 
other, if they did not look at its being placed in course 
of ultimate extinction? 

It is not true that our fathers, as Judge Douglas as- 
sumes, made this government part slave and part free. 
I In the Peoria speech, 1854. See pages 222-22;^, Appendix. 



The Lincoln-Douglas Debate 67 

. . . He assumes that slavery is a rightful thing in 
itself — was introduced by the framers of the Constitu- 
tion. The exact truth is that they found the institution 
existing among us, and they left it as they found it. 
But in making the government they left this institution 
with many clear marks of disapprobation upon it . . . 
and they left it among them because of the difficulty — 
the absolute impossibility — of its immediate removal. 

The judge alludes very often in the course of his 
remarks to the exclusive rights which the States have 
to decide the whole thing for themselves. I agree with 
him very readily that the different States have that 
right. He is but fighting a man of straw when he 
assumes that I am contending against the right of the 
States to do as they please about it. Our controversy 
with him is in regard to the new Territories. . . . 
What I insist upon is. that the new Territories shall 
be kept free from it while in the territorial condition. 
****** 

The real issue in this controversy ... is the senti- 
ment on the part of one class that looks upon the insti- 
tution of slavery as a wrong. . . . That is the issue 
that will continue in this country when these poor 
tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent. 
It is the eternal struggle between these two princi- 
ples — right and wrong — throughout the world. 
They are the two principles that have stood face to 



68 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

face from the beginning of time, and will ever con- 
tinue to struggle. The one is the common right of 
humanity, and the other is the divine right of kings. 
It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops 
itself. It is the same spirit that says, "You toil and 
work and earn bread, and I'll eat it." No matter in 
what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a 
king who seeks to bestride the people of his own 
nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from 
one race of men as an apology for enslaving another 
race, it is the same tyrannical principle. 

And if I believed that the right to hold a slave in a 
Territory was equally fixed in the Constitution with the 
right to reclaim fugitives, I should be bound to give it 
the legislation necessary to support it. ... I say, if 
that Dred Scott decision is correct, then the right to 
hold slaves in a Territory is equally a constitutional 
right with the right of a slaveholder to have his run- 
away returned. . . . I defy any man to make an argu- 
ment that will justify unfriendly legislation to deprive 
a slaveholder of his right to hold his slave in a Terri- 
tory, that will not equally, in all its length, breadth, 
and thickness, furnish an argument for nullifying the 
fugitive-slave law. Why, there is no such an Aboli- 
tionist in the nation as Douglas, after all. 

Douglas's formula shielded slavery as an institu- 
tion and admitted of its extension. Lincoln's for- 
mula called for immediate restriction and "ultimate 



The Lincoln-Douglas Debate 69 

extinction." In the election which followed the 
debate. Lincoln's party was supported by a majority 
of the popular vote in the State, but the legislature, 
by a narrow margin, chose Douglas as his own suc- 
cessor in the Senate. The debate marked the crest 
of a great political movement in the country. That 
movement had created a new party of opposition to 
Douglas's great party — a new party w-ith a power- 
ful leadership and a progressive programme. 

An auspicious note of the new regime impending 
was Lincoln's success in trying out a novel fashion in 
pubhc speech. He had inherited the example of for- 
mal and high-sounding oratory. Gradually he freed 
himself from that love of profuseness wdiich had 
given distinction to the smooth periods of speakers 
entranced wnth the classic tradition. The people, as 
usual, were ready for the change before it came. 
Lincoln was a pioneer in the speech of pith and 
point. He was daring to usher in an improved breed 
of eloquence — "the power," as Emerson puts it, "to 
translate a truth into language perfectly intelligible 
to the person to whom you speak." The end and 
aim of the new method in the forum was to convince 
the judgment and provoke an enlightened ground of 
action. Douglas was predisposed to speech that was 
courtly, propitious, prudential. Such a style aimed 



70 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

to please by verbal enchantment, to inspire loyalty 
through the impression of mental dimension. It is 
effective sometimes in promoting a false sense of 
security by means of skillfully shadowed counsel. 
Lord Charnwood contrasts the two styles of public 
discourse very happily in speaking of Lincoln's con- 
nection with the debate:^ 

One fact about the method of his speaking is easily 
detected. In debate, at least, he made no use of pero- 
rations, and the reader who looks for them will often 
find that Lincoln just used up the last few minutes in 
clearing up some unimportant point which he wanted 
to explain only if there was time for it. We asso- 
ciate our older parliamentary oratory with an art which 
keeps the hearer pleasedly expectant rather than dan- 
gerously attentive, through an argument which if dweh 
upon might prove' unsubstantial, secure that it all leads 
in the end to some great cadence of noble sound. But 
in Lincoln's argumentative speeches the employment of 
beautiful words is least sparing at the beginning or 
when he passes to a new subject. It seems as if he 
deliberately used up his rhetorical effects at the outset 
to put his audience in the temper in which they would 
earnestly follow him and to challenge their full atten- 
tion to reasoning which was to satisfy their calmer 
judgment. He put himself in a position in which, if 

I "Abraham Lincoln," pp. 134, 135. 



The Lincoln-Douglas Debate 71 

his argument were not sound, nothing could save his 
speech from failure as a speech. Perhaps no standing 
epithet of praise hangs with such a weight on a man's 
reputation as the epithet "honest." ... It is no mean 
intellectual and spiritual achievement to be as honest 
in speech with a crowd as in the dearest intercourse 
of life. 



CHAPTER V 

EPILOGUE OF THE DEBATES 

The real democratic American idea is, not that every man 
shall be on a level with every other, but that every one shall 
have liberty, without hindrance, to be what God made him. — 
Beecher. 

Lincoln was now a permanent figure in national 
politics. Whether he willed it or not, he could not 
escape being drafted into the service of his party to 
further the special motive for which it came into 
being. He had taken the lead in formulating its 
doctrine. He had exercised and massed public opin- 
ion around that doctrine. Writing to A. G. Henry 
in November, 1858, he said: "I am glad I made the 
late race. It gave me a hearing on the great and 
durable question of the age, which I could have had 
in no other way; and though I now sink out of view, 
and shall be forgotten, I believe I have made some 
marks which will tell for the cause of civil liberty 
long after I am gone." During the following winter, 
he prepared a lecture on "Discoveries, Inventions, 
and Improvements." This he delivered "at several 
towns in the central part of the State, but it was so 

72 



Epilogue of the Debates 73 

commonplace, and met with such indifferent success, 
that he soon dropped it altogether." ^ Afterward, 
as President, in conversation with Agassiz, Lincohi 
spoke of having at one time tried his hand "at com- 
posing a literary lecture — something which he 
thought entirely out of his hue." - The composition, 
Brooks says, "was never finished, and was left 
among his loose papers at Springfield when he came 
to Washington." 

There is no evidence that Lincoln undertook this 
lecture as a means of enhancing his income. Henry 
C. Whitney had read to him a lecture by Bancroft 
on the "wonderful progress of man," and Lincoln 
afterward stated to him and to Leonard Swett that 
he had been "thinking much on the subject and be- 
lieved he would write a lecture on 'Man and His 
Progress.' " Herndon tells us that invitations to 
deliver the lecture "came in very freely."" but Lin- 
coln, probably discouraged by the slight reception 
accorded him in his few appearances as lecturer al- 
ready, declined further engagements. Because a 

1 Herndon and Weik, III :448, 449. 

2 Harper's Magazine, XXXI -.222-230. 

3 Tracy, "Unpublished Letters of Abraham Lincohi," pub- 
lishes Lincoln's replies to invitations to lecture at Rock Island 
and Chicago, pp. 104, 141. Dr. William Jayne, in "Personal 
Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln," p. 11. speaks of Lincoln 
as having lectured before his literary society at Illinois College, 
and giving the proceeds to the society. 



74 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

few Illinois towns in the vicinity of Springfield did 
not pour out of evenings to listen to Douglas's great 
opponent in an unfinished dissertation on the prog- 
ress of man would be no criterion of his competency 
to compose a lecture or to interest an audience. 
At Springfield he had addressed a ratification 
meeting" of three, including himself and Hern- 
don, a few days after the birth of the Republican 
party at Bloomington, Illinois, where he had elec- 
trified his audience by the "Lost Speech." The lec- 
ture itself is interesting as an initial effort on a 
learned subject by a man who was deeply interested 
in the progress of civilization, but who lacked the 
preparation for composing anything notable or 
highly instructive on the subject. 

Had Lincoln chosen to write a lecture for deliv- 
ery, or an essay for publication, on some aspect of 
liberty or democracy, he would doubtless have greatly 
succeeded. He had the capacity for accurate and 
searching investigation in such a field, and was 
gifted with the power of thought to inform facts 
with striking interest — as his Cooper Institute ad- 
dress the next year abundantly showed.^ But even 
such a lecture, at that time, would have required 

I Arnold, p. 444, says : "There was a lecture of his upon 
Burns full of favorite quotations and sound criticism." No 
trace of such a lecture has been found. 



Epilogue of the Debates 75 

other than a central Illinois town for an audience, 
and such an essay would have attracted the interest 
only of those who could find pleasure in the weightier 
contributions to magazines and books. The lecttire 
in question strikes one as deliberately juvenile in 
conception and presentation. It was seemingly de- 
signed to inspire in a popular audience the begin- 
nings of interest in a subject of distinctly cultural 
value. Lincoln's own interest in the subject was 
of such a nature. With such a purpose, it was 
something more than naivete that led him to use 
the Bible as one of his sources of information. One 
point he took from the Webster's Dictionary of that 
time ; others from history, and still others from 
patent laws. 

That Lincoln's purpose and aim were solely cul- 
tural would seem to be implied in some of the more 
seriously conceived sentences of the address. A 
few of these are worth quoting: 

What one observes, and would himself infer noth- 
ing from, he tells to another, and that other at once 
sees a valuable hint in it. 

^ >|; ;(c ;i< H= =H 

I will venture to consider it [invention of printing] 
the true termination of that period called "the dark 
ages." 



76 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

They [the mass of men at the advent of printing] 
not only looked upon the educated few as superior 
beings, but they supposed themselves to be naturally 
incapable of rising to equality. To emancipate the 
mind from this false estimate of itself is the great task 
which printing came into the world to perform. . . . 
It is, in this connection, a curious fact that a new 
country is most favorable — almost necessary — to the 
emancipation of thought, and the consequent advance- 
ment of civilization and the arts. 

This lecture contains but a single literary allusion, 
and that is a facetious application of two lines of 
Cato's soliloquy, in Addison's tragedy, "Cato," to 
Young America. 

Lincoln continued to discuss the "doctrine of 
squatter sovereignty" and the Dred Scott decision in 
addresses which were but reverberant of the late 
contest with Douglas. At Chicago, at Columbus, 
Ohio, and at Cincinnati, as well as at various points 
in Kansas, he responded to invitations to continue 
the theme which had fotmd in him its most effective 
expositor. Beyond the borders of his own State, he 
was beginning to be looked upon as the ablest inter- 
preter of the new Republican party, which was now, 
everywhere north of the slavery line, gathering its 
forces together for the next national election. He 



I 



Epilogue of the Debates 77 

was looked upon with favor as a presidential possi- 
bihty. Douglas was in the race for the Democratic 
nomination. The Ohio speeches were prelusive cf 
the fateful campaign of the following year. At 
Columbus, where Douglas had previously spoken, 
Lincoln took occasion to clear up a current misrep- 
resentation of his views on the political and social 
rights of the negro. He had been accused of favor- 
ing negro suffrage, and Douglas had interpreted him 
as advocating the social eciuality of black and white 
men. He quoted his remarks on this subject, made 
in reply to Douglas both at Ottawa and at Charles- 
ton, 111. At Ottawa he said : 

I will say here, while upon this subject, that I have 
no purpose either directly or indirectly to interfere 
with the institution of slavery in the States where it 
exists. ... I have no purpose to introduce political 
and social equality between the white and black races. 
There is a physical difference between the two which, 
in my judgment, will probably forever forbid their liv- 
ing together upon the footing of perfect equality, and 
inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be 
a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor 
cf the race to which I belong having the superior 
})OsitiGn. I have never said anything to the contrary, 
but I hold that . . . there is no reason in the world 



78 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights 
enumerated in the Declaration of Independence — the 
right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I 
hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white 
man. I agree with Judge Douglas, he is not my equal 
in many respects — certainly not in color, perhaps not in 
moral and intellectual endowments. But in the right to 
eat bread, without leave of anybody else, which his own 
hand earns, he is my equal, and the equal of Judge 
Douglas, and the equal of every living man. 

Substantially the same declaration he quoted from 
his late speech at Charleston. His attitude on the 
subject was unequivocal, and it expressed the heart 
of the slavery controversy. The Columbus reply to 
Douglas was in every sense typical of Lincoln's plain 
•and unerring power to outreason his opponent. The 
style was serious and unadorned, definite and co- 
herent, though conversational in phrase. He an- 
swered Douglas's finesse in making a distinction 
between federal and local authority favorable to his 
"squatter sovereignty" doctrine by analyzing an 
article on the subject which Douglas had contributed 
to Harper's Magazine. This involved a very clear 
discussion of the divergence between the views of 
the two men on popular sovereignty. In regard to 
the government of a Territory. Lincoln had, of 



Epilogue of the Debates 79 

course, no difficulty in showing that his opponent's 
own reasoning emerged inevitably in a recognition 
of Congress as the ultimate authority. Applied to a 
Territory, therefore, Douglas's view of popular sov- 
ereignty admitted the possibility of establishing slav- 
ery in it irrespective of the wishes of the slaves 
themselves or of the families inhabiting, or to in- 
habit, the same territory. In interpreting the atti- 
tude of the fathers, whom Douglas had aligned in 
support of his popular sovereignty views, Lincoln 
completely out-maneuvered the Senator by the sim- 
ple process of showing "what these men did them- 
selves do upon this very question of slavery in the 
Territories." This he accomplished by reciting 
plainly and accurately the history of the Ordinances 
of 1784 and 1787, specifically toward slavery; the 
relation of the Constitution to the later Ordinance, 
and the attitude of Thomas Jefferson toward slavery. 
No more telling language was employed by Lin- 
coln in this powder ful Columbus speech than this, 
directed to Douglas : 

I suppose the institution of slavery really looks small 
to him. He is so put up by nature that a lash upon his 
back would hurt him, but a lash upon anybody else's 
back does not hurt him. . . . 

Judge Douglas ought to remember, when he is en- 



80 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

deavoring to force this policy upon the American 
people, that while he is put up in that way, a good 
many are not. He ought to remember that there was 
once in this country a man by the name of Thomas 
Jefferson, supposed to be a Democrat. ... In con- 
templation of this thing, we all know he was led to 
exclaim, "I tremble for my country when I remember 
that God is just !" 

Were Lincoln living to-day, a witness of the auto- 
cratic methods of enslaving and absorbing whole 
populations accustomed to and loving the liberty of 
self-government, it is easy to fancy the moral ele- 
vation of his words in condemnation of the pre- 
sumptuous insolence of such a tragic and barbarous 
policy. 

On the next day, September 17, Lincoln, follow- 
ing Douglas, spoke at Cincinnati. His address there 
contained words of courageous and far-sighted im- 
plication. They seem to us to-day to have been, 
by suggestion, a forecast of historic events soon to 
follow. Addressing himself to the people of his 
native State, he said : 

I say, then, in the first place, to the Kentuckians, 
that I am what they call, as I understand it, a "Black 
Republican." I think slavery is wrong, morally and 
politically. I desire that it should be no further spread 



Epilogue of the Debates 81 

in these United States, and I should not object if it 
should gradually terminate in the whole Union. 

:1; * * * * * 

In the first place, we know that a government like 
this, a government of the people, where the voice of 
all men of the country, substantially, enters into the 
administration of the government, what lies at the 
bottom of all of it is public opinion. 

^j H; ^ :'; -.;; ;}: 

Upon this subject of moulding public opinion, I call 
your attention to the fact — for a well established fact 
it is — that the judge never says your institution of 
slavery is wrong ; he never says it is right, to be sure, 
but he never says it is wrong . . . for a man may sa)', 
when he sees nothing wrong in a thing, that he does 
not care whether it be voted up or voted down ; but 
no man can logically say that he cares not w^hether a 
thing goes up or down which appears to him to be 
wrong. 

There is one other thing I will say to you in this 
relation. ... It is my opinion that it is for you to 
take him [Douglas] or be defeated; and that if you 
do take him, you may be beaten. You will surely be 
beaten if you do not take him. We, the Republicans 
and others forming the opposition of the country, 
intend to "stand by our guns," to be patient and firm, 
and in the long run to beat you whether you take him 



82 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

or not. We know that before we can fairly beat you, 
we have to beat you both together. 

^ ;J: ^ ^; ^ ^ 

We mean to treat you, as near as we possibly can, 
as Washington, Jefferson, and Madison treated you. 
We mean to leave you alone, and in no way to inter- 
fere with your institution ; to abide by all and every 
compromise of the Constitution. . . . We mean to 
remember that you are as good as we ; that there is no 
difference between us, other than the difference of 
circumstances. 

:jc ;)c :jc 5); >(« ^ 

I have told you what we mean to do. I want to 
know, now, when that thing takes place, what do you 
mean to do? I often hear it intimated that you mean 
to divide the Union whenever a Republican or any- 
thing like it is elected President of the United States. 
(A voice: "That is so.") "That is so," one of them 
says. I wonder if he is a Kentuckian. (A voice: 
"He is a Douglas man.") Well, then, I want to 
know what you are going to do with your half of it? 
. . . Are you going to build a wall some way between 
your country and ours ? . . . Will you make war upon 
us and kill us all ? Why, gentlemen, I think you are as 
gallant and as brave men as live . . . but man for man, 
you are not better than we are, and there are not so 
many of you as there are of us. You will never make 
much of a hand of whi])])ing us. ... If we were 



Epilogue of the Debates 83 

equal, it would likely be a drawn battle ; but being 
inferior in numbers, you make nothing by attempting 
to master us. 

T^ '1^ 'I* 'r 'I* -l" 

After saying this much, let me say a little on the 
other side. There are plenty of men in the slave 
States that are altogether good enough for me to be 
either President or Vice-President, provided they will 
profess their sympathy with our purpose, and will 
place themselves on such ground that our men, upon 
principle, can vote for them. There are scores of 
them — good men in their character for intelligence, 
and talent, and integrity. I should be glad to have 
some of the many . . . noble men of the South to 
place themselves where we can confer upon them 
the high honor of an election upon one or the other 
end of our ticket. It would do my soul good to do 
that thing. 

A subtle trait of Lincoln's talent for expression 
was his disposition to strip a matter of controversy 
free from all confusing elements, to reduce it to 
alternatives. He loved to isolate an idea, and, as 
nearly as he could, give to it the final phrasing. This 
is the method of the creators of literature; but in 
argument, Lincoln made it direct and strictly ra- 
tional. . "There are two ways of establishing a prop- 
osition," he said at Columbus. "One is by trying to 



84 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

demonstrate it upon reason, and the other is, to 
show that great men in former times have thought 
so and so, and thus to pass it by weight of pure 
authority. Now, if Judge Douglas will demonstrate 
somehow that this is popular sovereignty — the right 
of one man to make a slave of another, without any 
right in that other, or any one else, to object — dem- 
onstrate it as Euclid demonstrated propositions — 
there is no objection. But when he comes forward, 
seeking to carry a principle by bringing to it the 
authority of men who themselves utterly repudiate 
that principle, I ask that he shall not be permitted 
to do it." At Cincinnati he gave a very concrete 
illustration of his bias for reducing his opponent's 
argument to an absurdity by putting it in the form 
of a mathematical proportion. Douglas had stated 
at Memphis the year before, and repeatedly after- 
ward, that in all contests between the negro and 
the white man, he was for the white man, but in all 
questions between the negro and the crocodile he 
was for the negro. Lincoln resolved his statement 
into the following proposition : 

As the negro is to the white man, so is the crocodile 
to the negro ; and as the negro may rightfully treat 
the crocodile as a beast or reptile, so the white man may 
ris^htfully treat the negro as a beast or reptile. 



Epilogue of the Debates 85 

"That," he said, "is really the point of all that 
argument of his." 

The views of the two men on the economics of 
slave labor were irreconcilable. Douglas implied 
that to free the negro would be prejudicial to the 
white man. There is no proof that he ever made a 
serious study of the question. Nor is there proof 
that Lincoln investigated the subject at first hand 
and in detail. He raised the question at Cincinnati 
and maintained that Douglas's assumption was false. 
He held there was no necessary conflict between the 
white man and the negro, that there was "room 
enough for us all to be free," and that "the mass of 
white men are really injured by the effects of slave- 
labor in the vicinity of their own labor." He de- 
nied the assumption of some men that, among the 
laboring class, the condition of slaves was better 
than that of hired laborers. The condition of the 
hired laborer was superior because he had the abil- 
ity to become an employer.^ 

Two weeks later, Lincoln, in an interesting and 

I During the following year, i860, in his Cooper Institute 
lecture, Lincoln mentions Helper's "The Impending Crisis," 
which he probably read soon after its appearance in 1857. It 
was the most elaborate study of the effects of slavery upon 
white labor available at the time. Lincoln's economic theory 
was never developed beyond the brief statements contained in 
his first annual message to Congress, his reply to a Committee 
of New York Workingmen, March 21, 1864, and in his letter 
to Colfax, April 4, 1865. 



86 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

well-written address before the Wisconsin Agricul- 
tural Society, at Milwaukee, was able to state his 
views of labor and capital with greater clearness. 
He distinguished between the "mud-sill" theory 
held by those who assumed that the hired laborer, 
being "fatally fixed in that condition for life," was 
as bad off, or worse, than the slave, and the theory 
of those who, like himself, held "that labor is prior 
to, and independent of, capital — that, in fact, cap- 
ital is the fruit of labor, and could never have 
existed if labor had not first existed; that labor can 
exist without capital, but that capital could never 
have existed without labor. Hence they hold that 
labor is the superior — greatly the superior — of cap- 
ital." He conceded that there was a "relation be- 
tween labor and capital." A "few men own capital" 
and "hire or buy another few to labor for them," 
but a "large majority belong to neither class of 
hirers nor hired," men who "with their families 
. . . work for themselves . . . taking the whole 
product to themselves, and asking no favors" of 
capital or labor. Against the "old general rule . . . 
that educated people did not perform manual labor," 
he described "the just, generous, and prosperous 
system" of a "prudent, penniless beginner in the 
world" who by labor acquires property for himself 



Epilogue of the Debates 87 

and "at length hires another Beginner to help him." 
With this system of "free labor," how could edu- 
cation be "most satisfactorily combined?" The 
"mud-sill" theory assumed "that labor and educa- 
tion are incompatible;" that the education of la- 
borers was useless and dangerous, for the heads of 
laborers contained "explosive materials" to be kept 
as far as possible away "from that peculiar sort of 
fire which ignites them." On the other hand "the 
Author of man . . . probably intended that heads 
and hands should cooperate as friends," that the 
head should direct and control the hands and the 
mouth "inseparably connected with it; and that 
being so, every head should be cultivated and im- 
proved by whatever will add to its capacity for per- 
forming its charge. In a word, free labor insists 
on universal education." 

In relation to agriculture, he believed that "book- 
learning is available." He advised a knowledge of 
botany and mechanics. "Chemistry assists in the 
analysis of soils, selection and application" of fer- 
tilizers, and in other ways. He advised intensive 
cultivation of the soil in preference to extensive 
farming. He looked upon education as "cultivated 
thought," best combined with "any labor, on the 
principle of thorough work ;" and he looked forward 



88 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

to the time \\hen tlie "pressure of population wuuld 
cause to be esteemed as the most \aluable of all 
arts" that "of deriving a comfortable subsistence 
from the smallest area of the soil. No community 
whose every member possesses this art, can ever 
be the victim of oppression in any of its forms. 
Such a community will be alike independent of 
crowned kings, money kings, and land kings." 

Lincoln did not speak so much upon the technic 
of agriculture, for which he would not have been 
fitted, as upon the practical philosophy and civil 
significance of the- art. He believed that a large 
farming population of free, intelligent people, tend- 
ing constantly to become property owners, was a 
safeguard against political and economic tyranny. 
This was part and parcel of his ideals of democracy 
as against social privilege. The political obstacles 
to democracy he knew to be the more immediate and 
menacing. This he had indicated a few months 
before, in a rather Ijrilliant letter in response to 
an invitation to attend, in Boston, a festival in 
honor of the birthday of Thomas Jefferson.^ "The 
principles of Jefferson," he said, "are the definitions 
and axioms of free society. And yet they are de- 
nied and evaded, with no small show of success. 

1 Letter to H. L. Pierce and others, April 6. 1859. 



Epilogue of the Debates 89 

One dashingly calls thcni 'glittering generalities.' 
Another bluntly calls them 'self-evident lies.' And 
others insinuously argue that they apply to 'superior 
races.'" These expressions, differing in form, are 
identical in object and effect — the supplanting of the 
principles of free government, and restoring those of 
classification, caste, and legitimacy. They would de- 
light a convocation of crowned heads plotting against 
the people. They are the vanguard, the miners and 
sappers of returning despotism. We must repulse 
them or they will subjugate us. This is a world of 
compensation, and he who would be no slave must 
consent to have no slave. If Lincoln had sought to 
unite his industrial and political philosophy in a 
single conception, perhaps he could not have given 
it a more splendid statement than he gave to the 
beautiful sentence with which he closed his high- 
minded address at Milwaukee : ^ 

Let us hope, rather, that by the best cultivation of 
the physical world beneath and around us, and the 
best intellectual and moral world within us, we shall 
secure an individual, social, and political prosperity 

I It is remarkable that Lincoln, in his Wisconsin address, 
spoke with such clearness upon the very aims in agriculture 
which were subsequently to be promoted by his Presidency, in 
the land grants of 1862, and later, in the establishment within 
the States of colleges of agriculture and mechanical arts. 



90 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

and happiness, whose course shall be onward and 
upward, and which, while the earth endures, shall 
not pass away. 

Here we have a clear note of that individual style 
which Lincoln's remarkable experience as a writer 
and public speaker was gradually fashioning. Spir- 
itually, he was yet to be perfected through suffering. 
But his mind had already stood the stiff tests of 
courage and sympathy, of severe study and patience, 
of faith in the essential nobility and aspiration of 
human nature. The individuality of that style like- 
wise was yet to be perfected. His experience was 
to be extended and his mind mellowed by a crisis 
far more vast and refining than lay in the intellectual 
adventure with Stephen A. Douglas. His prose had 
already felt, at points in his recent development, 
the heart-borne elevation which was to sustain and 
distinguish the Gettysburg Address, and wdiich cul- 
minated in the music of that "sacred poem" which 
we know as the Second Inaugural.^ 

I Carl Schurz spoke of Lincoln's Second Inaugural as a 
"sacred poem," in his essay, "Abraham Lincoln." 



CHAPTER VI 

EAST AND WEST MEET AT COOPER INSTITUTE 

The great difference between a real statesman and the pre- 
tender is, that the one sees into the future, while the other 
regards only the present ; the one lives by the day, and acts 
on expediency ; the other acts on enduring principles and 
for immortality. — Burke. 

By 1859, when Lincoln and Douglas participated 
in the Ohio campaign, the feeling between the North 
and South had become perilously unfriendly. Doug- 
las was fast losing the support of the Southern 
Democrats. Jefferson Davis, typical of Southern 
political sentiment, openly broke with him in the 
Senate, and contemplated a movement of indepen- 
dence for the States of his section.^ A schism in 
the Democratic party was inevitable. Both Davis 
and Alexander H. Stephens were favorable to the 
reviving of the African slave-trade, prohibited by 
Congress in 1818 and made a piracy two 3'ears later. 
President Buchanan inclined to the side of the slave- 
holding statesmen; or, perhaps, through the lack 
of personal strength and a policy of his own, de- 

I See Rhodes, "History of the United States, from the Com- 
promise of 1850," II., chap. X, for a full exposition of this 
period. 

91 



92 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

f erred to their views. ^ Sectionalism, menacing and 
defiant, was rapidly overwhelming statesmanship 
in Congress. 

For want of a dominant mind and personality in 
control, the federal government was drifting be- 
fore the gathering storm of disunion. The John 
Brown raid deepened the feeling of hostility. The 
press of the land was arrayed on one side or the 
other in the impending cleavage over slavery. The 
church was soon to be riven ; and scholarship and 
public opinion throughout the countr}', violently dis- 
turbed by the time-worn contention, were settling 
down to a definite and irrevocable party alignment 
destined to be made the immediate occasion of 
secession. 

As the old-line Democracy dixided, the Repub- 
lican party consoHdated under the impulse of new 
leadership. Seward in the East and Lincoln in the 
West were its ablest interpreters. Of the two, Sew- 
ard w^as regarded both in the North and the South 
as the probable Republican nominee for President. 
Davis had called him "the master mind" of his 
party.- His speech at Rochester on the "irrepres- 
sible conflict" had declared that the United States 
must become "either entirely a slave-holding nation 

I Ibid., pp. 349-350, Z72.. 2 Ibid., p. 345. 



At Cooper Institute 93 

or entirely a free-lalxtr nation." ' This was the 
Lincoln doctrine in the Springlield speech of the 
same year. 1858. Each of the men had worked 
out the doctrine independently. Seward was oi)enly 
a candidate for the honor. Lincoln had said he 
would support any good man, North or South, as- 
suredly loyal to Rei)ublican principles. He wrote 
that he felt kindly to Chase, and further: "I must 
say I do not think myself lit for the presidency."- 
Later he wrote (December 9, 1859) : "You know 
I am pledged to not enter a struggle with him 
[Trumbull] for the seat in the Senate now occu- 
pied by him ; and yet I w^ould rather haye a full 
term in the Senate than in the i)residency." •' 



1 During Lincoln's speech at Cincinnati in September, 1859, 
he quoted the phrase "irrepressible conflict." A voice in the 
audience intimated that the phrase was original with him. n<it 
with Seward. Lincoln replied: "Neither I, nor Seward, nor 
Hickman, is entitled to the enviable or unenviable distinction 
of having first expressed that idea. That same idea was ex- 
pressed bj' the Richmond Enquirer in Virginia, in 1856, quite 
two years before it was expressed by the first of us." He 
referred to the Enquirer and it^ editor, Roger A. Pryor, again, 
in the same connection, in his speech at New Haven, in March, 
i860. 

2 Letter to Samuel Galloway, July 28. 1859. 

3 Letter to N. B. Judd, December 9, 1859. 

On April- 16, Lincoln had written to T. J. Pickett, of Rock 
Island, a newspaper friend who wished to announce his name 
for the Presidency, as follows : "As to the other matter you 
kindly mention. 1 must in candor say I do not think myself 
fit for the Presidency. ... I really think it best for our 
cause that no concerted effort, such as you suggest, should be 
made. Let this be considered confidential." 



94 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

Yet Lincoln was already being seriously thought 
of in connection with the Republican nomination 
of i860 by party leaders, particularly in his own 
State. He had added to his reputation in Ohio, 
where Chase was the leading party man. In the 
closing month of 1859. in response to solicitations, 
he gave a number of addresses at different points 
in Kansas. Only fragments of these addresses sur- 
vive, but they are full enough to afford a clear 
indication of what he said. His Kansas speeches 
interpreted Douglas's popular sovereignty thus: "If 
one man would enslave another, neither that other 
nor any third man has a right to object." He fol- 
lowed up Douglas's article in "Harper's Magazine." 
as at Columbus; he defined the Republican policy 
as opposed to the further spread of slavery and to 
the revival of African slave-trade. "Douglas's po- 
sition," he argued, "leads to the nationalization of 
slavery as surely as does that of Jeff Davis and 
Mason of Virginia. The two positions are but 
slightly different roads to the same place — with this 
difference, that the nationalization of slavery can 
be reached by Douglas's route, and never can be 
by the other." He urged party leaders to organize: 
"hold conventions, select candidates, and carry elec- 
tions. At every step we must be true to the main 



At Cooper Institute 95 

purpose. . . . And as to men for leaders, we must 
remember that 'He that is not for us is against us ; 
and he that gathereth not with us, scattereth.' " 

The mental state of the natit)n in i860 was un- 
favorable to almost any form of literature outside 
of what contained a political tang. It was a period 
when much was written and spoken. Both verse 
and prose were written, but the literary conscious- 
ness as such was stayed by the electric atmosphere 
of the national tempest which all felt was immi- 
nent. Education, religion, and literature, alike suf- 
fered partial eclipse; these, like the business inter- 
ests of the nation, stood for the time being in abey- 
ance, waiting the fresh resiliency that was to come 
with a restored Union. Speeches, news, and com- 
ment were in great request by readers of every 
class. Buchanan's administration, with its inepti- 
tude in administering the government, was soon to 
close, and all parties were awaiting anxiously the 
results of the forthcoming national conventions. The 
utterances of those most competent to fathom and 
offer a solution to the unhappy political incertitude 
was the literature most eagerly sought. Lincoln's 
speeches and debates had already been published in 
Ohio and were used to influence public opinion. In 
ivS6o, the demand for his speeches was strong, and 



96 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

an edition was published at Columbus, Ohio. Of 
this edition there were various issues. In the case 
of some, from fifteen to thirty thousand copies were 
said to have been sold.^ 

Lincoln's Illinois friends were busy with plans 
to promote his candidacy. Jesse W. Fell, corre- 
sponding secretary of the Republican Central Com- 
mittee, assured him of the increasing demand for 
his nomination, and procured from him a few para- 
graphs of autobiography. The composition, in style 
and content reflecting his humble life and oppor- 
tunities, was too apologetic for the purpose, and 
some months afterward he furnished, as the basis 
of a campaign biography, an autobiographic sketch 
written with more detail and dignity. On February 
1 6, the Chicago Tribune editorially endorsed Lin- 
coln's nomination, and Norman B. Judd, member 
of the Republican National Committee for Illinois, 
managed to secure the convention for Chicago.- 
Even yet Lincoln's following was slight outside of 
Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Iowa.'' An event took 
place, however, which gave him immediate distinc- 
tion in the East. On February 27, i860, in response 
to an invitation he had received to deliver a lecture 

1 Sparks, Illinois Historical Collections, III :592. 

2 Tarbell, 1 :339- 

T, Rhodes. II :458. 



At Cooper Institute 97 

in Henry Ward Beecher's church in Brooklyn, he- 
gave, instead of a lecture at Plymouth church, an 
address at Cooper Institute in New York.' This 
great address was pivotal for the East, where the 
sentiment had strongly favored the nomination of 
Seward. 

Over three months had elapsed between the 
invitation (in October, 1859) and the delivery of 
the address. During the interval he gave much 
time to its preparation. "He searched through the 
dusty volumes of congressional proceedings in the 
State library, and dug deeply into political history. 
He was painstaking and thorough in the study of 
his subject, but when at last he left for New York, 
we had many misgivings — and he not a few himself 
— of his success in the great metrop(jlis." - 

Lincoln spoke to "a great audience, including all 
the noted men — all the learned and cultured — of his 
party in New York: editors, clergymen, statesmen, 
lawyers, merchants, critics. They were all very 
curious to hear him. His fame as a powerful speaker 
had preceded him, and exaggerated rumor of his 
wit — the worst forerunner of an orator — had 
reached the East. \Mien Air. Bryant presented him. 
on a high platform of the Cooi)er Institute, a vast 

I Page 22,2,. Appendix. 2 Herndon. Ill :454. 



98 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

sea of eager upturned faces greeted him, full of 
intense curiosity to see what this rude child of the 
people was like. . . . When he spoke he was trans- 
formed. . . . For an hour and a half he held his 
audience in the hollow of his hand. His style of 
speech and manner of delivery were severely simple. 
What Lowell called 'the grand simplicities of the 
Bible,' with which he was so familiar, were reflected 
in his discourse. With no attempt at ornament or 
rhetoric, without parade or pretence, he spoke 
straight to the point." ^ 

In conception and content the Cooper Institute 
Address is remarkable. It was perhaps the best forti- 
fied as well. as the most convincing and effective po- 
litical address of an argumentative nature before an 
American audience up to that time. It aimed to 
promote the popular endorsement of the Republican 

I Joseph H. Choate, "Abraham Lincohi," an address before 
the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution. 1900. 

Previous to his announcement for the Legislature, Lincoln 
had served as captain of volunteers in the Black Hawk war. 
During that year, 1832, William Cullen Br3-ant came west to 
visit his brothers, who had settled near Jacksonville, 111. The 
poet's biographers have told a story of his being introduced 
to a "raw youth" of quaint and pleasing speech by the name 
of Captain Abraham Lincoln. The story was interesting from 
the fact that it fell to the poet-editor to introduce Lincoln to 
his Cooper Institute audience, twenty-eight years afterward. 
Miss Tarbell explodes the story, 1:80. 81. It illustrates how 
easily a "Washington hatchet" myth may spring up around a 
life that has become famous. Bryant's most interesting legacy 
from his western trip is his poem, "The Prairies," finely de- 
scriptive of "the unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful." 



At Cooper Institute 99 

party at the next national election. It sought to 
confirm in the faith of that party any who were 
doubtful which of the parties or principles it would 
be wiser to support. It purposed to show a distinct 
and unanswerable difference in goal between the 
Douglas policy and that maintained by the Repub- 
licans. Moreover, it intended to disarm the leaders 
of the South of disunion arguments, to present with 
exactness the attitude of Lincoln's party toward 
slavery, and to inspire the nation with confidence 
in the high moral purpose and sense of justice which 
he believed to be the soul of that attitude. 

Lincoln's unusual capacity for research and ex- 
position is fully shown in his answer to a statement 
made by Douglas at Columbus, Ohio : 

Our fathers, when they framed the government 
under which we live, understood this question just 
as well, and even better, than we do now. 

This statement Lincoln endorsed. - Then he pro- 
ceeded to show from historical facts that "our 
fathers" had actually favored the opinion that Con- 
gress possessed the power to prohibit slavery in the 
Territories. He showed that certain of the "thirty- 
nine" men who framed and signed the Constitution 
participated, as members of Congress under the 
Articles of Confederation, in framing the Ordinance 



100 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

of 1784 and the Ordinance of 1787, and voted for 
the provision against slavery in the Northwest Ter- 
ritory. Only one of these six men had voted against 
the anti-slavery proviso. He pointed out that, in 
the first Congress under the Constitution, the sixteen 
members who had been among the "thirty-nine" 
voted unanimously "to enforce the ordinance of '87. 
including the prohibition of slavery in the North- 
western Territory"; that President Washington, an- 
other of the "thirty-nine," signed the bill. Subse- 
quent history disclosed the probability or the fact 
that members of the "thirty-nine" surviving in Con- 
gress had voted for laws to control the relation of 
slavery to the Territory of Mississippi and the Loui- 
siana purchase. The last act of Congress on Fed- 
eral control of slavery in which signers of the 
Constitution \oted was the Missouri Compromise. 
Here the two survivors divided for and against on 
that measure. . The question which Douglas had 
raised was the attitude of the P^athers on the con- 
stitutional division of local and Federal control of 
slavery in the Territories. Douglas maintained that 
the Fathers favored local control ; Lincoln showed 
conclusively that twenty-one out of the twenty-three 
Fathers who acted on the question, had voted favor- 
ablv for Federal control, while none of the sixteen 



At Cooper Institute 101 

others, including Franklin. Hamilton, and Gouv- 
erneur Morris, was known to be unfavorable to 
Federal control. None of these was known to be 
favorable to slavery, "unless it may be John Rut- 
ledge, of South Carolina." 

In similar manner he punctured the reasoning of 
the Supreme Court, which based the Dred Scott 
decision upon the Fifth amendment, and Douglas's 
intrenchment behind the Tenth amendment, by 
showing that these amendments were "in progress 
toward maturity" under the same Congress which 
A'oted to enforce the Ordinance of 1787. He dem- 
onstrated the inconsistency of the South in calling 
for congressional authority to revive the slave-trade, 
or in supporting "popular sovereignty," and at the 
same time opposing the right of Congress under the 
Constitution to prohibit slavery in the Territories. 
He quoted Jefferson's hope of the ultimate emanci- 
pation of the slaxes, maintained the impossibility of 
the South's charge of connection between the Re- 
publicans and the John Brown raid, and explained 
what must, it seems, become the historic feeling 
upon that episode. "J<jhn Brown's effort," he said, 
"was peculiar. It was not a slave insurrection. It 
was an attempt by white men to get up a revolt 
among slaves, in which the slave? refused to par- 



102 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

ticipate. . . . An enthusiast broods over the oppres- 
sion of the people till he fancies himself commis- 
sioned by Heaven to liberate them. . . . Orsini's 
attempt on Louis Napoleon, and John Brown's at- 
tempt at Harpers Ferry were, in their philosophy, 
precisely the same. The eagerness to cast blame on 
Old England in the one case, and on New England 
in the other, does not disprove the sameness of the 
two things." 

In 1837, when Lincohi was twenty-eight years 
old, he had eloquently pleaded for the enforcement 
of the laws and respect for them. In the debates 
with Douglas, he had insisted on fidelity to the con- 
stitutional provision for a fugitive slave law. He 
deprecated, now, on the same principle of observ- 
ance of the law, the attempt of John Brown and his 
associates to fly into its face in an effort to subvert 
a system they regarded as iniquitous. His oppo- 
sition to the South's desire to extend slavery would 
recjuire him at the same time to oppose the acts of 
northern States to obstruct the return of slaves 
escaped from their owners. But his position in 
favor of law observance would not justify the South 
in maintaining against him that the Supreme Court 
decision had supported the desire of the South to 
extend slavery to Federal Territories in spite of 



At Cooper Institute 103 

Congress, for the "bare majority of the judges" in 
that decision "disagree with one another in the rea- 
sons for making it." The decision was "mainly 
based upon a mistaken statement of fact — the state- 
ment . . . that the right of property in a slave is 
distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitu- 
tion." Since the Constitution contains no such af- 
firmation as the Court asserts, Lincoln held it would 
doubtless reconsider the decision based upon it. 

Lincoln closed his Cooper Union Address by ar- 
guing that the South, now threatening disunion, 
would not be satisfied with the unconditional sur- 
render of the Territories; it would eventually de- 
mand the overthrow of free-State constitutions 
which forbid slavery. This his party could not 
grant, because it believed slavery to be wrong. But 
in the face of the wrong, the party could afford to 
"let it alone where it is, because that much is due 
to the necessity arising from its actual presence in 
the nation" ; but a sense of duty called for opposition 
to its spread to the Territories. "Let us not be slan- 
dered from our duty by false accusations. . . . Let 
us have faith that right makes might, and in that 
faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we 
understand it." 

The address deeply impressed the East. Toward 



104 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

Lincoln, its effect "was to dispel every thought of 
anything but an earnest, high-minded, scholarly man, 
bred to the knowledge of the republic's history and 
political institutions, who has mastered the prob- 
lem that tormented the nation and made the conflict 
of sections seem not far away."^ Greeley in the 
Tribune and Bryant in the Evening Post spoke in 
high terms of it. "I do not hesitate," wrote Greeley, 
shortly after the Civil War, "to pronounce it the 
very best political address to which I ever listened 
— and I have heard some of Webster's grandest." - 
The address was reproduced as a campaign docu- 
ment. In September, an edition, carefully anno- 
tated, was published by Charles C. Nott and Cephas 
Brainard of the New York bar, who were members 
of the committee that arranged for its delivery. 
The preface to their edition said :" 

No one who has not actually attempted to verify 
its details can understand the patient research and 
historical labor which it embodies. . . . Neither can 
any one who has not travelled over this precise ground 
appreciate the accurac}^ of every detail, or the self- 
denying impartiality with which j\lr. Lincoln has 
turned from the testimony of "the Fathers," on the 

1 Oberholtzer, "Abraham Lincoln," p. 136. 

2 Rhodes, II :43i. 

3 Putnam, "Abraham Lincohi," pp. 233, 234 



At Cooper Institute 105 

general question of slavery, to present the single ques- 
tion which he discusses. From the first line to the 
last — from his premises to his conclusion, he travels 
with swift, unerring directness which no logician ever 
excelled. ... A single, easy, simple sentence of plain 
Anglo-Saxon words contains a chapter of history that, 
in some instances, has taken days of labor to verify and 
which must have cost the author months of investiga- 
tion to acquire. And, though the public should justly 
estimate the labor bestowed on the facts which are 
stated, they cannot estimate the greater labor in- 
volved on those which are omitted — how many pages 
have been read — how many works examined — what 
numerous statutes, resolutions, speeches, letters, and 
biographies have been looked through. Commencing 
with this address as a political pamphlet, the reader 
will leave it as an historical work — brief, complete, 
profound, impartial, truthful — which will survive the 
time and the occasion that called it forth, and be 
esteemed hereafter no less for its intrinsic worth than 
its unpretending modesty. 

To his New York audience, Lincoln's address 
was a revelation of fresh strength and hope for 
America. No one before him had assembled the 
facts and ideals of the republic into a declaration so 
compact of knowledge and persuasion, so pro- 
foundly relevant to the supreme issue of the time. 



106 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

His words were simple, sincere, and cheering. Here 
was a new and unexpected pilot, with chart and 
compass in his hand, with direction in his mind, 
speaking the decisive word in a moment of cloud 
and confusion. Strong men heard him, and went 
away to deliberate upon his message. The people 
read his words, and saw in them a higher meaning 
the more they reflected. They felt there was char- 
acter in what he said, and a fair promise of success 
in what he proposed. There was something dawn- 
ing in his lofty earnestness; and his conclusions 
were clear, far-seeing, and fraught with insight. He 
seemed to many to be the only man in the nation 
whose courage, integrity, and comprehension gave 
ample assurance against rashness in action, a suffi- 
cient and steady wisdom for the present task. The 
Cooper Institute x\ddress is not Lincoln's master- 
piece, but it is a substantial contribution to our liter- 
ature of knowledge and power. ^ 

From New York Lincoln went to New Hamp- 
shire to visit his son Robert, then a student in the 
academy at Exeter, preparing for Harvard. He 

I On January 19, i860, during the interval between the invi- 
tation to speak in New York and the delivery of the Cooper 
Institute Address, Lincoln wrote a notable letter to A. H. 
Stephens, interpreting the constitutional history of the country, 
and evidently designed to strengthen the weak knees of the lat- 
ter. It is to be found in Tracy's "Unpublished Letters of Abra- 
ham Lincoln," p. 85 ff. 



At Cooper Institute 107 

had made speeches in New England, during his 
term in Congress, in support of General Taylor's 
candidacy for President of the United States. At 
that time his most notable speech was made in Tre- 
mont Temple, Boston, following an address by Mr. 
Seward. During this visit of i860, he was call'ed 
for and spoke at various points in New Hampshire 
and Connecticut. His speeches contained a popular 
flavor, but were well spoken of by the press. His 
address at Hartford, March 5, seems ill-considered: 
it has the manner of a superficial stump-speech. 
True, it contains many facts he had often used, but 
they are loosely put together, and the speech 
breathes the language of hurried preparation for 
the event, or no preparation at all. The speech at 
New Haven is more coherent in form and sub- 
stance ; it contains several paragraphs from the New 
York Address. For the rest, it is reminiscent of 
the less formal side of the debates with Douglas. 
Both at Hartford and New Haven he referred to 
the local shoemakers' strike, then in progress, as an 
occasion to discuss, in a surface way, the antagonism' 
between free and slave labor. The subject was con- 
sidered, not on economic grounds, but with the aim, 
apparently, of stimulating Republican votes. 

Lincoln made friends for himself and his cause 



108 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

in New England. The press reports of his speeches 
were usually highly complimentary. The unpol- 
ished manner was observed by his audiences, but 
there was something contagious about what he said. 
He was commended for his substance so liighly that 
his awkwardness and informality were ascribed, at 
least by many, to native good humor and unconven- 
tionality. This was essentially correct. It is a 
tribute to the good sense of his reporters that they 
could say, "He fortified e\'ery position assumed Ijy 
proofs which it is impossible to gainsay; and while 
his speech was at intervals enlivened by remarks 
which elicited applause at the expense of the Demo- 
cratic party, there was, nevertheless, not a single 
word which tended to impair the dignity of the 
speaker, or weaken the force of the great truths he 
uttered."" ' Or, again: "He indulges in no tlowers 
of rhetoric, no eloquent passages : he is not a wit. a 
humorist or a clown; yet, so great a vein of pleas- 
antry and good nature pervades what he says, glid- 
ing over a deep current of practical argument, that 
he keeps his hearers in a smiling good mood with 
their mouths open, ready to swallow all he says." 

Interesting light on the appreciation accorded to 
Lincoln in New England as well as on his method 

I Tarbell. 1 :330. 33i- 



At Cooper Institute 109 

of self-education is reiorded in i'rancis li. Carpen- 
ter's "Six Months at the White Mouse," a source 
book (jf permanent iniijortance on Lincohi, written 
shortly after his assassination by the man commis- 
sioned to paint the emanci[)ation picture of the Presi- 
dent and his cabinet. Mr. Carpenter reproduces an 
article written during;- the war by Rev. J. P. Gulliver, 
of Norwich, Conn., and published in TJic Independ- 
ent of September i, 1864. On the mornint;" after 
Lincoln made his speech at Norwich (March 9, 
i860), Mr. Gulliver met Lincoln at the railway 
station, where he was engaged in conversation with 
the mayor of the city. 

On being introduced to him. writes Mr. Gulliver, he 
fixed his eyes upon me and said : "I have seen you 
before, sir !" "I think not," I replied ; "you must mis- 
take me for some other person." "No, I don't ; I saw 
you at the Town Hall, last evening." "Is it possible, 
Mr. Lincoln, that you could observe individuals so 
closely in such a crowd ?" "Oh, yes !" he replied, 
laughing; "that is my way. I don't forget faces. 
Were you not there?" "I was, sir, and I was well 
paid for going;" adding, somewhat in the vein of 
pleasantry he had started, "I consider it one of the 
most extraordinary speeches I ever heard." 

As we entered the cars, he beckoned me to take a 
seat with him, and said in a most agreeably frank 



110 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

way, "Were you sincere in what you said about my 
speech just now?" "I meant every word of it, Mr. 
Lincoln. Why, an old dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, 
who sat near me, applauded you repeatedly, and when 
rallied upon his conversion to sound principles, an- 
swered, 'I don't believe a word he says, but I can't 
help clapping him, he is so pat !' That I call the tri- 
umph of oratory. . . . Indeed, sir, I learned more of 
the art of public speaking last evening than I could 
from a whole course of lectures on Rhetoric." 

"Ah ! that reminds me," said he, "of a most extraor- 
dinary circumstance which occurred at New Haven 
the other day. They told me that the Professor of 
Rhetoric in Yale College, — a very learned man, isn't 
he?" 

"Yes, sir, and a fine critic, too." 

"W^ell, I suppose so ; he ought to be, at any rate. 
They told me that he came to hear me, and took notes 
of my speech, and gave a lecture on it to his class the 
next day ; and, not satisfied with that, he followed me 
up to Meridian the next evening, and heard me again 
for the same purpose. Now, if this is so, it is to my 
mind very extraordinary. I have been sufficiently 
astonished at m^ success in the West. It has been 
most unexpected. But I had no thought of any marked 
success in the East, and least of all that I should draw 
out such commendations from literary and learned 
men. Now," he continued, "I should like very much 



At Cooper Institute 111 

to know what it was in my speech you thought so 
remarkable, and what you suppose interested my 
friend, the Professor, so much?" 

"The clearness of your statements, Mr. Lincoln ; 
the unanswerable style of your reasoning, and espe- 
cially your illustrations, which were romance and 
pathos and fun. and logic all welded together. That 
story about the snakes, for example, which set the 
hands and feet of your Democratic hearers in such 
vigorous motion, was at once queer and comical, tragic 
and argumentative. It broke through all the barriers 
of a man's previous opinions and prejudices at a crash, 
and blew up the very citadel of his false theories before 
he could know what had hurt him." 

In response to Mr. Gulliver's inquiry how he had 
acquired his unusual power of "putting things," and 
suggesting that it must have been through educa- 
tion, Lincoln replied : 

"Well, as to education, the newspapers are correct ; 
I never went to school more than six months in my 
life. But as you say, this must be a product of culture 
in some form. ... I can say this, that among my 
earliest recollections I remember how, when a mere 
child, I used to get irritated when anybody talked to 
me in a way I could not understand. I don't think I 
ever got angry at anything else in my life. ... I can 
remember going to my little bedroom, after hearing 



112 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

the neighbors talk of an evening with my father, and 
spending no small part of the night walking up and 
down, trying to make out what was the exact meaning 
of some of their — to me — dark sayings. I could not 
sleep . . . until I had caught it . . . until I put it in 
language plain enough, as I thought, for any boy I 
knew to comprehend. ... I am never easy now, w^hen 
I am handling a thought, till I have bounded it North, 
and bounded it South, and bounded it East, and 
bounded it West. Perhaps that accounts for the char- 
acteristic you observe in my speeches, though I never 
put the two things together before." 

"Mr. Lincoln, I thank you for this. It is the most 
splendid educational fact I ever happened upon." 

Replying" to Gulliver's desire to know how he had 
prepared for his profession, Lincoln stated that he 
had been a lawyer's clerk at Springfield, had copied 
"tedious documents," and had picked up what law 
he could "in the intervals of other work." 

"But your question reminds me of a bit of education 
I had, which I am bound in honesty to mention. In 
the course of my law reading, I constantly came upon 
the word demonstrate. I thought at first that I under- 
stood its meaning, but soon became satisfied that I did 
not. I said to myself, 'What do I mean when I dem- 
onstrate more than when I reason or prove? How 
does demonstration differ from any other proof?' I 



At Cooper Institute 113 

consulted Webster's dictionary. That told of 'certain 
proof,' 'proof beyond a doubt' ; but I could form no 
idea of what sort of proof that was. ... I consulted 
all the dictionaries and books of reference I could 
find, but with no better results. You might as well 
have defined blue to a blind man. At last I said, 'Lin- 
coln, you can never make a lawyer if you do not under- 
stand what demonstrate means' ; and I left my situation 
in Springfield, went home to my father's house, and 
stayed there till I could give any proposition in the 
six books of Euclid at sight. I then found out what 
demonstrate means, and went back to my law studies." ^ 

The interviev^ with Lincoln was concluded with 
a reference to assertions he had made regarding 
"the demoralizing influences of Washington upon 
northern politicians in respect to the slavery ques- 
tion." Air. Gulli\"er said there was one other matter 
he wished to mention. 

"Mr. Lincoln, . . . You have become, by the con- 
troversy with Douglas, one of our leaders in this great 

I The reader will observe a discrepancy between this report 
of Gulliver and Lincoln's own autobiographical statement that 
he studied Euclid after his term in Congress (1846-48). The 
statement that Lincoln returned to his father's house to study 
Euclid has not been verified. We know that Lincoln studied 
law at New Salem; that he studied Kirkham's Grammar and 
Flint and Gibson's treatise on surveying there also, under the 
tutelage of Mentor Graham, the neighborhood schoolmaster. 
Mr. Henry B. Rankin told the writer that Graham claimed to 
have instructed Lincoln in Euclid also. 



114 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

struggle with slavery, which is undoubtedly the strug- 
gle of the nation and the age. What I would like to 
say is this, and I say it with a full heart. Be true to 
your principles and we will be true to you, and God 
will be true to us all !" His homely face lighted up 
instantly with a beaming expression, and taking my 
hand warmly in both of his, he said: "I say Amen toi 
that — Amen to that !" 

Lincoln was now a national figure to be reckoned 
with by local leaders of his party. He received 
many letters from men friendly to his nomina- 
tion for the Presidency. He was not averse to the 
possibility before him. yet he felt conservatively 
about it. Typical of his feeling was his letter of 
March 24, i860, to Samuel Galloway, assuring him 
of the esteem in which he w^as held in Ohio : 

Of course I am gratified to know I have friends in 
Ohio who are disposed to give me the highest evi- 
dence of their friendship and confidence. Mr. Parrott, 
of the legislature, has written me to the same efifect. 
If I have any chance, it consists mainly in the fact 
that the whole opposition would vote for me, if nomi- 
nated. (I don't mean to include the pro-slavery oppo- 
sition of the South, of course.) My name is new in 
the field, and I suppose I am not the first choice of a 
very great many. Our policy, then, is to give no 



At Cooper Institute 115 

offense to others — leave them in a mood to come to vis 
if they shall be compelled to give up their first love. 
This, too, is dealing justly with all, and leaving us in 
a mood to support heartily whoever shall be nomi- 
nated. I believe I have once before told you that I 
especially wish to do no ungenerous thing toward 
Governor Chase, because he gave us his sympathy in 
1858 when scarcely any other distinguished man did. 
Whatever you may do for me, consistently with these 
suggestions, will be appreciated and gratefully remem- 
bered. 

May 18. Lincoln was nominated for President by 
the Republican convention at Chicago, on the third 
ballot. Seward was his only close competitor. On 
the next day, at his home in Springfield, he thanked 
the committee of formal notification from the con- 
vention "for the high honor" done him, and ex- 
pressed his sense of the responsibility it imposed, — 
"a responsibility which I could almost wish had 
fallen upon some one of the far more eminent men 
and experienced statesmen whose distinguished 
names were before the convention." On the 23rd. 
he wrote his acceptance in a letter to George Ashmun 
of the Massachusetts delegation, who was chairman 
of the convention. This letter was exceedingly apt 
for the time and the occasion. 



116 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

Sir: I accept the nomination tendered me by the 
convention over which you presided, and of which I 
am formally apprised in the letter of yourself and 
others, acting as a committee of the convention for 
that purpose. 

The declaration of principles and sentiments which 
accompanies your letter meets my approval ; and it 
shall be my care not to violate or disregard it in any 
part. 

Imploring the assistance of Divine Providence, and 
with due regard to the views and feelings of all who 
were represented in the convention — to the rights of 
all the States and Territories and people of the nation ; 
to the inviolability of the Constitution ; and the per- 
petual union, harmony, and prosperity of all — I am 
most happy to cooperate for the practical success of 
the principles declared by the convention. 

Your obliged friend and fellow-citizen, 

A. Lincoln. 

This letter was in engaging contrast to the long 
political discussions contained in the letters of ac- 
ceptance by Lincoln's two leading opponents for 
the Presidency. It was in strict keeping with his 
decision to observe prudence and discretion in his 
utterances during the political contest. Shortly 
afterward, he received a friendly letter, advising 
caution in making promises of any kind, from the 



At Cooper Institute 117 

poet, William Cullen Bryant, who had introduced 
Lincoln at Cooper Institute. "Mr. Bryant's letter 
contained much political wisdom, and was written 
in that scholarly style for which he was distin- 
guished. But it could not surpass the simple dignity 
and grace of Lincoln's reply" : ^ 

Springfield, III., June 28, i860. 
Please acce])t my thanks for the honor done me by 
your kind letter of the i6th.. I appreciate the danger 
against which you would guard me ; nor am I wanting 
in the purpose to avoid it. I thank you for the addi- 
tional strength your words give me to maintain that 
purpose. 

Your friend and servant, 

A. Lincoln. 

As the reader of Lincoln's compositions moves 
from one to another, he is continually reminded of 
their sanity and human spirit. Sometimes they are 
crude and disappointing in statement, sometimes 
they are sporti\e, transient, or unstudied in matter. 
In compositions of some length he is rarely sure 
and inviolate in manner or in points of detail. In 
this respect he was like everybody else who has 
written prose extensively. Somel)ody has called 
attention to his accustomed use of the "split infini- 

I Browne, p. 248. 



118 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

tive." About this, an amusing story is told of a 
correction suggested to him in the second paragraph 
of his letter accepting the nomination for the Presi- 
dency. He handed the letter to his friend, Dr. 
Newton Bateman, State Superintendent of Educa- 
tion, with the remark : 

"Mr. Schoolmaster," he said, "here is my letter of 
acceptance. I am not very strong on grammar, and 
I wish you to see if it is all right. I wouldn't like to 
have any mistakes in it." 

The doctor took the MS. and after reading it, said: 

"There is only one change I would suggest, Mr. 
Lincoln. You have written, 'It shall be my care to not 
violate or disregard it in any part ; you should have 
written, not to violate. Never sj^lit an infinitive, is the 
rule." 

Mr. Lincoln took the manuscript, regarding it a 
moment with a puzzled air. "So you think I better 
put those two little fellows end to end, do you?" he 
said as he made the change.^ 

Lincoln's fund of ideas outran his resources and 
technic of speech. In this, too, he was not unlike 
many another of his fellow mortals. 

I Tarbell, 1 :36i. 



CHAPTER VII 

ON THE ROAD TO WASHINGTON 

And, moving up from high to higher, , 
Becomes on Fortune's crowning slope 
The pillar of a people's hope, 

The centre of a world's desire. 

— Tcittjyson. 

Naturally, Lincoln's elevation to the responsibil- 
ity which the Presidency involved opened to him a 
wide vista of intellectual expansion as novel as it 
was, at the time, disquieting. There were many 
sober-minded citizens within his own party who had 
serious misgivings as to his preparation for the 
task before him, — a task full of hazard, which called 
for the most exquisite handling to avoid the ship- 
wreck which already threatened the republic. Few, 
if any, could realize at the moment the sound char- 
acter of his preparation and the singleness of pur- 
pose that had been evolved in his previous mastery 
of constitutional history and principles, in his eager 
and intensive acquaintance with the thought of his 
contemporaries on both sides of the great question 
which had long disturbed the nation, and in his 

119 



120 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

unexampled opportunity to test the actual strength 
of that preparation against the most resourceful 
statesman of the opposing party. Moreover, he had 
tried himself and his views in the presence of those 
critics he was accustomed to regard as most reliable, 
the people and the press. This experience had 
deepened his convictions and had fortified his con- 
fidence in himself. As President-elect he approached 
the infinitely complicated business before him with 
calm deliberation, with his wonted delicacy of per- 
ception and knowledge of men, and above all with 
the fixed instincts and practice of sincerity and tact 
in his relations with others. 

Between Lincoln's election, November 6, and his 
inauguration, March 4, seven southern states had 
severed their relation with the Union and estab- 
lished a confederacy. During this interim. Presi- 
dent Buchanan had halted betwixt the opinions of 
the loyal and disloyal groups of his cabinet advisers. 
His fourth annual message to Congress contained a 
dissertation on the danger imminent to the country 
from prolonged slavery agitation. In this part of 
his message he supported his genuine union sympa- 
thies with citations from Andrew Jackson and 
James Madison, but he weakly argued that his sworn 
duty to execute the laws was made impracticable 



On the Road to Washington 121 



fc>" 



by the action of federal officials in South Carolina, 
and threw upon Congress the responsibility of pro- 
viding more effective legislation to protect the 
country from dissolution. Warning Congress 
against the possible emergency of its having to de- 
cide the "momentous question, whether you possess 
the power by force of arms to compel a State to 
remain in the Union," he forthwith, with the en- 
couragement of a few lines froni Madison, con- 
cluded that Congress, although possessing many 
means of preserving the Union "by conciliation," 
had no authority to do so by "force." ^ The failure 
of the Crittendon compromise, a sincere but ill- 
starred effort to prevent disruption by means of a 
permanent division between free and slave territory, 
was in all probability due to Lincoln's personal un- 
friendliness to the "popular sovereignty" feature of 
the proposal.- The brief but ardent attem]:)ts of 
Alexander H. Stephens to forestall secession ended 
in nothing beyond his brilliant and unanswerable 
logic, as, for example, before the convention of his 
own State in January, 1861. The Peace Conven- 
tion, on the motion of Virginia, likewise came to 
naught. Sumner and Chase, interpreting the ma- 

1 Richardson, "Messages and Papers of the Presidents," 
V :626 ff. 

2 Rhodes, III :290. 



122 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

jority opinion of the party that had elected Lincoln, 
set their faces against any peace movement which 
admitted the further extension of slavery in the 
territories.^ Meantime the political leaders of the 
South, who regarded the North's hostility to slavery 
as a stigma upon them, acted upon the assumption 
that complete separation was the only solution of 
differences that were historic, and which were psy- 
chologically past the point of reconciliation. 

To Lincoln, in Springfield, quietly and retlectively 
alive to the posture of public opinion in both North 
and South, these efforts to compromise the "vexed 
question" were only attempts to substitute expedi- 
ency for principle. In a confidential letter to Sew- 
ard, February i, he wrote: "I am for no compro- 
mise which assists or permits the extension of the 
institution on soil owned by the nation. And any 
trick by which the nation is to acquire territory, and 
then allow some local authority to spread slavery 
over it, is as obnoxious as an}'^ other. I take it that 
to effect some such result as this, and to put us again 
on the highroad to a slave empire, is the object of 
all these proposed compromises." Lincoln had 
already determined to give shape to the national 
policy. There must be no change in the fundamen- 

I Ibid., p. 290. 



On the Road to Washington 123 



fc)' 



tal position which he had taken at Peoria in 1854 — 
the position to which he had given final phrasing in 
the house-divided-against-itself speech in Spring- 
field four years later, and which he had successful!}' 
held against the acknowledged chieftain of the op- 
posing side. This position it was which had brought 
him the nomination and the constitutional election 
of those who believed that it should become the 
policy of the nation. 

In what he committed to paper in the form of 
letters following his nomination, he was careful to 
protect himself against misrepresentations. His 
speeches and debates, he felt, were accessible and 
contained all that any one needed with respect to 
his political views. His letters following the elec- 
tion were of similar character. To those who w-ere 
anxious that he should reassure any whose feelings 
were disturbed by garbled reports of what he had 
said, he held that to repeat what was already in 
print and correctly represented his opinions "would 
have an appearance of sycophancy and timidity 
which would excite the contempt of good men and 
encourage bad ones to clamor the more loudly."^ 
His nice sense of political i)rudence is similarly seen 
in the closing paragraph of his letter to N. P. Par- 
I Letter to Truman Smith, November 10, i860. 



124 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

shall, written ten days after his election : "I am not 
at liberty to shift my ground — that is out of the ques- 
tion. If I thought a repetition would do any good. 
I would make it. But in my judgment it would do 
positive harm. The secessionists per se, believing 
they had alarmed me, would clamor all the louder." 
On the subject of secession, about to become an 
accomplished fact, he had said little. On the very 
day the Charleston convention met, December 1 7. 
Lincoln wrote to Thurlow Weed : "I believe you 
can pretend to find but little, if anything, in my 
speeches about secession. But my opinion is, that no 
State can in any way lawfully get out of the Union 
without the consent of the others; and that it is the 
duty of the President and other government func- 
tionaries to run the machine as it is." To E. B. 
Washburne, on the day following South Carolina's 
ordinance of secession, he wrote: "Please present 
my respects to the general [Scott], and tell liim, 
confidentially, I shall be obliged to him to be as well 
prepared as he can to either hold or retake the forts, 
as the case may require, at and after the inaugura- 
tion."^ On the next day, December 22, he wrote 
to his old-time Whig friend, Alexander H. Stephens, 

I To Mayor David Hunter, December 22, he wrote: "If the 
forts fall, my judgment is that they are to be retaken." 



On the Road to Washington 125 

who in two months more was to become vice-Presi- 
(lent of the Confederate States, as follows: 

Your obliging answer to my short note is just re- 
ceived, and for which please accept my thanks. I 
fully appreciate the present peril the country is in, and 
the weight of responsibility on me. Do the people of 
the South really entertain fears that a Republican 
administration would, directly or indirectly, interfere 
with the slaves, or with them about the slaves? If 
they do, I wish to assure you, as once a friend, and 
still, I hope, not an enemy, that there is no cause for 
such fears. The South would be in no more danger 
in this respect than it was in the days of Washington. 
I suppose, however, this does not meet the case. You 
think slavery is right and ought to be extended, while 
we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted. That, 
I suppose, is the rub. It certainly is the only substan- 
tial difference between us. 

To his trusted friend, Senator Lyman Trumbull, 
Lincoln did, indeed, confide a letter, containing a 
statement of his attitude toward the South, for con- 
ditional publication. The letter was written on the 
importunity of General Duff Green, but not en- 
trusted to him, and was to be delivered to him for 
publicity, provided, first, that Trumbull thought it 
not unwise to do so "on consultation with our dis- 



126 Lincoln as a Man of Lettefs 

creet friends"; and secondly, provided that the 
twelve United States Senators from the States of 
Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, 
and Texas, would sign the following declaration to 
be published conjointly with Lincoln's statement: 

We recommend to the people of the States we rep- 
resent respectively, to suspend all action for the dis- 
memberment of the Union, at least until some act 
deemed to be violative of our rights shall be done by 
the incoming administration.^ 

Which of course was never done! Few circum- 
stances in Lincoln's life more fittingly illustrate his 
consummate skill in handling a delicate situation to 
the advantage of his cause than this. Had his letter 
to General Green been given to the public, it would 
have enlightened it — in addition to the obligation it 
imposed upon the representatives of the States next 
to secede — upon two points of general interest only. 
One of these was, that the President-elect was not 
averse to the people's having an opportunity to ex- 
press their will through an amendment to the Con- 
stitution (which he himself did not desire) ; the 
other matter, copied from the late Republican plat- 

I This single sentence of Lincoln's condenses the burden of 
A. H. Stephens's remarkable speech before the Georgia conven- 
tion three weeks later. 



On the Road to Washington 127 



fc>' 



form, admitted the riglit of "each State to order and 
control its own domestic institutions according to 
its own judgment exchisively," together with a re- 
pudiation of any "lawless invasion by armed force 
of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter 
under what pretext." Both of these subjects, two 
months afterward, were embodied in the First 
Inaugural, and must have been already determined 
upon for treatment in that address. 

The public mind, growing daily more feverish 
since the national election, became intensely 
solicitous over the fate of the Union. It eagerly 
watched for some expression of prospective 
policy from the man, suddenly drawn from the 
citizenry of a small western town and as yet 
unpracticed in statecraft, upon whom any rescue 
from the critical drift toward disintegration 
clearly rested. Although not widely announced, 
the new leader's permanent temper in the execu- 
tion of his task had been heard. On November 
20, to his fellow-townsmen, at a meeting to cele- 
brate his election, he said: 'T thank you in com- 
mon with all those who have thought fit by their 
votes to endorse the Republican cause. I rejoice 
with you in the success which has thus far at- 
tended that cause. Yet in all our rejoicings, let 
us neither express nor cherish any hard feelings 
toward any citizen who by his vote has differed 
with us. Let us at all times remember that all 



128 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

American citizens are brothers of a common 
country, and should dwell together in the bonds 
of fraternal feeling." 

Literature contains no more golden or precious 
words. Here was the initial expression of that 
wonderful charity which was to give endurance to 
his work as well as immortality to what he said. It 
was the feeling which w^as one day to be enshrined 
in language of faultless beauty, when his spirit had 
been mellowed by sorrow and service. 

There was a distinctive strain of the spiritual and 
the prescient in Abraham Lincoln. He was in every 
sense of the word a child of the earth. His reac- 
tions were strikingly human. In one accent or an- 
other they seem to have touched, for a note of har- 
mony, every chord of individual experience. What- 
ever share of genius posterity will finally ascribe to 
him, it will doubtless find a basis for the judgment 
in his possession of strains both romantic and classic. 
There were moments when sweetness and tender- 
ness gave charm to what he said or did. He could 
rise to feelings that were, on the occasion, majestic 
in manner and effect. Yet he could be ludicrous. 
He had instincts that were genuinely dramatic. He 
was by nature a gentleman, — honest, upright, sin- 
cerely desirous of self -improvement. Ever thoughtful 



On the Road to Washington 129 

of the rights and feehngs of others, Lincoln was a 
man of fine and generous sympathies. 

His departure from Springfield for Washington 
will always be commemorated by the Farewell Ad- 
dress of February ii, 1861. In its one hundred 
and fifty words, there is no impression of studied 
effect, but of simple, sincere confession,-^ Spring- 
field and its people were dear to him. His twenty- 
five years of experience there had been years of 
long, steady pull upward. He had attained the high- 
est goal of a man's ambition. That was all clear to 
him now. But there was another and necessary 
goal ahead of him. It carried with it the burden 
of the Union. What Washington had begun, he 
must retrieve and preserve — a greater task. \\'ith 
God "everywhere for good," how could he fail? In 
his great task, he made it plain that he placed trust 
in His assistance, and he bade his hearers do like- 
wise. He shared with them his honors ; let them 
share with him the faith that the end should be 
divinely guided. His words were a fitting sequel 
to a humble yet aspiring discipline in the stream of 
the world, a firm and far-seeing outlook upon the 
high yet somewhat shadowy enterprise ahead of 
him. The Farewell Address is a piece of literature 
I Page 256, Appendix. 



130 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

which may well nourish youth and delight old age. 
It is fertile with the unaffected culture of human 
life and of religion.^ 

The thirty or more short addresses which Lincoln 
made between his Illinois home and the national 
capital were given, for the most part, according to a 
prearranged schedule. His purpose was, not so 
much to disclose his general line of policy after the 
inauguration, as to inspire the feeling of unity and 
loyalty of the northern people upon whom he must 
depend to sustain him in whatever action events 
might call out. At Indianapolis he told his audi- 
ence that, in the trying position in which he would 
be placed, his reliance would be upon the people of 
the United States; "and I wish you to remember, 
now and forever, that it is your business, and not 
mine; that if the union of these States and the liber- 
ties of this people shall be lost, it is but little to any 
one man of fifty-two years of age, but a great deal 
to the thirty millions of people who inhabit these 
United States, and to their posterity in all coming 
time. It is your business to rise up and preserve 
the Union and liberty for yourselves, and not for 
me. . . . Shall the Union and shall the liberties 

I There exists a number of different versions of the Farewell 
Address. That of Nicolay and Hay is the standard. 



On the Road to Washington 131 

of this country be preserved to the latest genera- 
tions?" 

Here was a direct and powerful appeal for the 
conscious and united support of all who held that 
the welfare of the nation rested upon those whose 
ideal for the United States was that of a free and 
self-governing people. Before the legislature of In- 
diana he discussed "coercion" and "invasion." — 
words then on the tongues of many. He disclaimed 
any intention to force the South Carolinians to sub- 
mit. However, he asked, would it be "invasion" 
or "coercion" for the United States to "hold and 
retake its own forts and other property," to collect 
its duties, or to "withhold the mails from places 
where they were habitually violated" ? In Cincin- 
nati he reminded the audience of his speech there 
in reply to Douglas, and pertinently quoted what 
he had said on that occasion to the Kentuckians, 
and added : "Fellow-citizens of Kentucky ! — friends ! 
— brethren! may I call you in my new position? T 
see no occasion, and feel no inclination, to retract 
a word of this. If it shall not be made good, be 
assured the fault shall not be mine." ^ 

One of the most appropriate speeches he made 
en route was his response to the unexpected appear- 

I See p. 80 for what Lincoln had said at Cincinnati. 



132 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

ance of a delegation of two thousand German work- 
ingmen of Cincinnati, whose spokesman addressed 
him as the champion of free labor and free home- 
steads, and concluded : "We firmly adhere to the 
principles which directed our votes in your favor. 
We trust that you, the self-reliant because self-made 
man, will uphold the Constitution and the laws 
against secret treachery and avowed treason. If to 
this end you should be in need of men, the German 
free workingmen, with others, will rise as one man 
at your call, ready to risk their lives in the effort to 
maintain the victory already won by freedom over 
slavery." In reply, Lincoln deemed it his duty to 
"wait until the last moment for a development of 
the present national difficulties before I express 
myself decidedly as to what course I shall pursue. 
I hope, then, not to be false to anything that you 
have to expect of me." He agreed that workingmen 
are the basis of all governments, and that a man's 
duty is "to improve not only his own condition, but 
to assist in ameliorating mankind. ... In regard 
to the homestead law ... so far as the government 
lands can be disposed of, I am in favor of cutting 
up the wild lands into parcels, so that every poor 
man may have a home. In regard to Germans and 
foreigners, I esteem them no better than other peo- 



On the Road to Washington 133 

pie, nor any worse. It is not my nature, when I 
see a people borne clown by the weight of their 
shackles — the oppression of tyranny — to make their 
life more bitter. . . . Rather would I do all in my 
power to raise the yoke than to add anything that 
would tend to crush them." 

To the legislature at Columbus, Ohio, the Presi- 
dent-elect said that he had not maintained silence 
from any want of anxiety. "It is a good thing that 
there is no more than anxiety, for there is nothing 
going wrong. It is a consoling circumstance that 
when we look out, there is nothing that really hurts 
anybody. We entertain different views upon polit- 
ical questions, but nobody is suffering anything. 
This is a most consoling circumstance, and from it 
we may conclude that all we want is time, patience, 
and a reliance on God who has never forsaken this 
people." These remarks, spoken "altogether extem- 
poraneously," were employed in detached phrases 
by the press and persons unfriendly to him, to show, 
as Miss Tarbell says, that Lincoln "did not grasp 
the situation." Only six weeks before, the most 
brilliant statesman of the South. Alexander H. 
Stephens, in an address to stay his own State from 
the act of secession, had said : "Pause, I entreat you, 
and consider for a moment what reasons vou can 



134 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

give, that will even satisfy yourselves in calmer 
moments — what reasons you can give to your fellow- 
sufferers in the calamity that it wull bring upon us. 
What reasons can you give to the nations of the 
earth to justify it? They will be the calm and de- 
liberate judges in the case; and what cause or one 
overt act can you name or point, on which to rest 
the plea of justification? What right has the North 
assailed? What interest of the South has been 
invaded? . . . Can either of you to-day name one 
governmental act of wrong, deliberately and pur- 
posely done by the government of Washington, of 
which the South has a right to complain? I chal- 
lenge the answer." Stephens prophetically warned 
the South against conduct which might entail the 
loss of its slaves through a "decree of universal 
emancipation which," he said, "may reasonably be 
expected to follow." 

At Steubenville, Ohio, he briefly referred to ma- 
jority rule. "The only dispute on both sides is, 
'What are their rights?' If the majority should 
not rule, who would be the judge? . . . We should 
all be bound by the majority of the American people; 
if not, then the minority must control. Would that 
be right ? Would it be just or generous ? Assuredly 
not. I reiterate that the majority should rule. If 



On the Road to Washington 135 

I adopt a wrong policy, the opportunity for con- 
demnation will occur in four years' time. Then I 
can be turned out, and a better man with better 
views put in my place." 

On February 15, at Pittsburgh, the President- 
elect made a more elaborate speech. After stating 
that when the time came for him to speak on the 
distracted condition of the country, he hoped to say 
nothing contrary to the spirit of the Constitution or 
disappointing to any whose expectation would be 
based upon what he had heretofore uttered, he said : 
"Notwithstanding the troubles across the river 
[pointing southward across the Monongahela] there 
is no crisis but an artificial one ... no crisis, ex- 
cepting such a one as may be gotten up at any time 
by turbulent men aided by designing politicians. J\Iy 
advice to them, under such circumstances, is to keep 
cool. If the great American people only keep their 
temper on both sides of the line, the troubles will 
come to an end, and the question which now distracts 
the country will be settled, just as surely as all other 
difficulties of a like character which have originated 
in this government have been adjusted." 

Lincoln knew American political and constitu- 
tional history well, and so was on familiar ground 
in his remarks. He felt it necessarv at Pittsburjrh 



136 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

to touch upon the tariff, a subject with which he 
was less intimate, and he so acknowledged. He 
asked his private secretary to read to the audience 
the tariff plank of the Chicago platform, w^hich was 
skillfully worded, and advocated such an adjustment 
of duties as would encourage good wages and good 
prices for farm and manufactured products. He 
then proceeded to generalize upon the economics of 
value in his strictly original way. The gist of his 
general doctrine was that labor "is the true standard 
of value," and it would be advantageous to produce 
at home necessary articles, "which can be made of 
as good quality and with as little labor at home as 
abroad." When goods are imported from abroad 
that can advantageously l3e manufactured here, 
"the carrying is demonstrably a dead loss of 
labor." 

At Cleveland, Lincoln repeated his belief that the 
"crisis is altogether artificial," and if let alone, would 
"go down of itself." At Buffalo, he stated that since 
the difficulties of the country were without prece- 
dent, to speak authoritatively he must wait for de- 
velopments; that the people's adherence to their 
convictions and to the Constitution would dispel the 
clouds and bring a "bright and glorious future." 
To tlie legislature at Albany, he assured his hearers 



On the Road to Washington 137 

that, at the proper time, he would speak for the good 
of both North and South. Replying to an address 
of welcome by the mayor of New York City, he 
declared that nothing would induce his consent to 
the destruction of the Union "unless it would be that 
thing for which the Union itself was made." To 
the Senate of New Jersey, he recalled his early 
reading of Weems's "Life of Washington," and 
spoke of his anxiety to be a "humble instrument in 
the hands of the Almighty" for perpetuating the 
object of the Revolutionary struggle. Before the 
Assembly of that State, he disclaimed having any 
malice toward any section, and said: "The man 
does not live w'ho is more devoted to peace than I 
am, none who would do more to preserve it, but it 
may be necessary to put the foot down firmly." He 
hoped to pilot the ship of state through the perils 
surrounding it, "for if it should suffer wreck now, 
there will be no pilot ever needed for another voy- 
age." Replying to the mayor of Philadelphia, he 
again gave it as his opinion that "the panic" was 
artificial, yet might do "considerable harm." "I 
promise you," he continued, "that I bring to the 
work a sincere heart. Whether I will l)ring a head 
equal to that heart will be for future times to 
determine." 



138 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

The address which Lincohi gave in Independence 
Hall, on the anniversary of Washington's birth,' in 
nobility of sentiment and elegance of phrase, in its 
vision and estimate of American constitutional lib- 
erty for his country and for mankind, surpassed any 
other he had yet made. It was improvised. It is a 
speech one loves to read and linger over, in these 
days when, throughout the world, the time is at 
hand when "that which gave promise that in due 
time the weights would be lifted from the shoulders 
of all men" is emancipating men and women every- 
where from the pretentions of antiquated autoc- 
racies, preying like vampires upon the blood 
and happiness of those whom nature meant to 
be free and self-governing. The address in Inde- 
pendence Hall was a singularly finished epitome of 
that philosophy of government the very essence of 
which he had derived, by years of profound study, 
from the Declaration of Independence, and of which, 
thus far in American history, he has been the most 
sagacious and eminent interpreter. Lincoln was the 
best prepared man in the country on such a theme 
— the best educated in the theory and application 
of the thought that vitalized the system of the Revo- 
lutionary founders and ga\'e virility to the precious 
I Page 257, Appendix. 



On the Road to Washington 139 



t>" 



literature which they left to posterity. There was 
much that was merely commonplace in his other 
speeches on this journey to the national capital — 
some things that were trite or ill-favored in diction; 
but in this off-hand deliverance, in the midst of 
surroundings freighted with sacred memories, he 
said the scrupulously fitting thing. There is nothing, 
perhaps, in word, or succession of sentences, or 
consistency of sentiment, which the most meticulous 
stylist would care to alter or omit. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE PRESIDENCY AND THE CIVIL WAR 

Our Federal Union ; it must be preserved. 

— Andrczi.' Jackson. 

Nothing will ruin the country if the people themselves will 
undertake its safety ; and nothing can save it if they leave tliat 
safety in any hands but their own. — Daniel Webster. 

When the President-elect arrived in Washington, 
he was welcomed by the mayor and citizens, Febru- 
ary 2y. In his response, Lincoln intimated his feel- 
ing that the ill-temper between the two sections of 
the country was due to their misunderstanding of 
each other. He mentioned his purpose to withhold 
from none the benefits of the Constitution. His 
very informal address to a party of serenaders on 
the next day was in similar terms. He was con- 
scious of speaking to southerners, and in homely 
words expressed the hope that better acquaintance 
would beget greater confidence between them and 
him. 

In the few days remaining before the inaugura- 
tion, he consulted with j^arty leaders about the per- 
sonnel of the cabinet. He was particularly solicitous 

140 



The Presidency and the Civil War 141 

to secure the services of Seward and Chase, his late 
rivals for the Tresidency. At the last moment 
Seward declined to accept the portfolio of State, 
but reconsidered his action upon the receipt of a 
well-worded note of ten lines from the incoming 
Chief Magistrate. This was on the day of the in- 
augural. Lincoln's address for this occasion had 
been prepared in a room o\'er a store at Springfield, 
late in January. Ilere he locked himself in, accord- 
ing to Herndon, with a few volumes containing 
"Henry Clay's great speech delivered in 1850; An- 
drew Jackson's proclamation against Nullification, 
and a copy of the Constitution. He afterwards 
called for Webster's reply to Hayne. a speech which 
he had read when he lived at New Salem, and 
which he always regarded as the grandest specimen 
of American oratory." The address^ contained 
the new President's assurance of his intention not to 
disturb the property or peace of the people of the 
Southern States, of his purpose to ofTer the pro- 
tection of the Constitution "as cheerfully to one 
section as to another." It then considered the fu- 
gitive slave clause of the Constitution. On this 
tender subject the President placed himself on the 
side of a law to return escaped slaves to their own- 
I Pages 258-269. Appendix. 



142 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

ers and at the same time to safeguard the negroes 
already free. 

The President considered the theory of the Con- 
stitutional Union. He held it to be perpetual — that 
perpetuity is a fundamental concept of all national 
government, and hence that no government ever 
made "in its organic law" provision for its own 
termination. Only an action "not provided for in 
the instrument itself" could destroy the Union. Even 
on the contract theory, although one party might 
break, the consent of all would be necessary law- 
fully to "rescind it." He showed that the history 
of the Union contemplated its perpetuity; that no 
State of its ow-n motion could get out of it. There- 
fore, "resolves and ordinances to that effect are 
legally void," and acts by one or more States against 
the authority of the United States "are insurrection- 
ary or revolutionary." He announced that he would 
take care that the laws of the nation should be 
faithfully executed, its property held, its taxes col- 
lected, and its mails, "unless repelled," "furnished 
in all parts of the Union." He warned any who 
would destroy the Union and fly to greater ills.' 
He presented with clearness the philosophy of ma- 

I Lincoln's words, "the ills you fly from," are probably a 
reminiscence of Shakespeare's words in Hamlet, III, i :8l, 82. 



The Presidency and the Civil War 143 

jorities and minorities, and showed that the defec- 
tion of the minority impHed future and unrestricted 
secession. This would lead to anarchy or despotism. 
Respecting a decision of the Supreme Court, it 
must be binding upon the parties to the suit. Even 
if it be erroneous, it can better be borne than "the 
evils of a different practice." On the other hand, 
the policy of the government on vital questions can- 
not be "irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Su- 
preme Court," for in that case the people would 
have ceased to be their own rulers. The "sub- 
stantial dispute" betw^een the two sections, he 
averred, was upon the question whether slavery was 
right or whether it was wrong. Geographically, 
separation was out of the question; nor could 
treaties between aliens be more faithfully enforced 
than "laws can among friends." It is clear that 
this argument was far-seeing, and suggested insu- 
perable difhculties to successful separation. The 
President intimated he would not object to the pro- 
posed amendment to the Constitution expressly for- 
bidding the Federal government to "interfere with 
the domestic institutions of the States," including 
slaves, inasmuch as that prohibition already was 
"implied constitutional law." He maintained that 
the frame of the government w^as such that, with 



144 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

a people virtuous and vij^nlant, public servants could 
not seriously injure it. He appealed against precipi- 
tate action, and pleaded that the intelligence, patriot- 
ism, and Christianity of the country were "still com- 
petent to adjust in the best way all of our present 
difficulty." 

In point of literary beauty, the closing paragraph 
of the First Inaugural is truly climactic. It was 
suggested to Lincoln by Seward, who wrote it origi- 
nally as follows : 

I close. We are not, we must not be, aliens or 
enemies, but fellow-countrymen and brethren. Al- 
though passion has strained our bonds of afifection 
too hardly, they must not, I am sure they will not, 
be broken. The mystic chords which, proceeding 
from so many battlefields and so many patriot graves, 
pass through all the hearts and all hearths in this 
broad continent of ours, will yet again harmonize in 
their ancient music when breathed upon by the guard- 
ian angel of the nation. 

It would have been better for Lincoln to close 
his first state paper, as he intended, without adding 
Seward's climax. But it was better still to take the 
latter's suggestion, which was offered as such, and 
transform it into a graceful appeal to sentiment — 
the moving memory of the past, the historic achieve- 



The Presidency and the Civil War 145 

ment of both North and South under the common 
emotion of a friendly spirit and singleness of aim. 
Retouched by Lincoln's defter hand. Seward's 
thought reappeared in more felicitous and enduring 
phrase : 

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. 
We must not be enemies. Though passion may have 
strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. 
The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every 
battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and 
hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell 
the chorus of the Union when again touched, as 
surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. 

In the field of politics, Lincoln had become a mas- 
ter. He had kept on good terms with the crowd. 
He had a large sympathy for the masses. He had 
great faith in public opinion. He had been untiring 
in his search for the best knowledge available, and 
had retained and organized his information with a 
view to its accuracy and practical usefulness. In 
the art of reasoning, he had acquired pow^r ; in the 
use of language, he had improved his natural taste 
by continual practice in writing and speaking. His 
resourcefulness reached from crudity in illustration 
to ideals that capture by their ethical refinement 
and charm. His success had come without the com- 



146 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

promise of personal integrity and conviction. His 
manner of action and speech, as well as his personal 
appearance, often provoked disappointment or a 
gibe. But there was a personality within him which 
transcended the appeal of physical comeliness or 
the claims of convention, and gave power to his 
ideas. These were contagious by virtue of their 
moral quality and unusual insight. He was a phi- 
losopher, too, in his devotion to common-sense. 

The new task before him was not politics, but 
statesmanship. He had come through many grada- 
tions of valuable experience, but he was untrained 
to the devious detail of actual administration. The 
responsibility of the Presidency entails far more 
than its executive function. Of this Lincoln was 
aware, but he had no advantage of long residence at 
Washington or observation abroad. He had not 
been governor of a State. He had seen the work- 
ings of a western legislature and that of the lower 
house of Congress. But the contacts involved in 
the Presidency were new, and implied great adjust- 
ment. There was a ceaseless swarm of office-seekers 
to deal with. Foreign relations and diplomatic 
functionaries called for close acquaintance and punc- 
tilious handling. Above all, the terrible emergency 
of a civil war pressed upon his mind an infinite 



The Presidency and the Civil War 147 

variety of untaniiliar demands: the delicate treat- 
ment of the southern forts, the calling and ecjuip- 
ment of raw troops, the supplying of military offi- 
cers, transportation by land and sea of munitions, 
food and funds, the blockade of the southern ports, 
recommendations to Congress, the execution of a 
just and consistent policy for the welfare of the 
nation, present and future. 

The matter of general policy he had long pon- 
dered. He had carefully worked it out on paper 
in the solitary room at Springfield. He expected 
the world to take note of that in his First Inaugural. 
When the Virginia convention, hesitating at Rich- 
mond before the irrevocable step of secession, sent 
a committee in April to ask the President to relieve 
the "uncertainty which prevails in the public mind 
as to the policy which the Federal executive intends 
to pursue toward the seceded States," the President 
expressed "deep regret and some mortification" that 
there still survived "great and injurious uncertainty 
in the public mind as to what policy" he intended to 
pursue. He repeated to the commissioners a part 
of the Inaugural, with comments, and commended 
that document to their "careful consideration" as 
the "best expression I can give of my purposes." 

It is to Lincoln's lasting renown that he was able 



148 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

through deep study and powerful imagination to 
set out in clear and substantial terms, at the begin- 
ning of his actual responsibilities, the purposes and 
principles of conduct which were to guide him 
through the unseen exigencies of a great and pro- 
longed war. This is, essentially, the thing that gives 
to the First Inaugural the importance of literature. 
There is, too, the excision of needless details. It 
is comprehensive and directly pertinent to the great 
social and historic question affecting the life and 
fortune of the American people then and thereafter. 
Its language and its thought have satisfied the judg- 
ment of later generations. 

Throughout the tedious routine of the war period, 
Lincoln's writings are filled with orders, proclama- 
tions, and dispatches called out by the business of 
administration. His great mind and heart were not 
completely swamped by the insistent demands of offi- 
cial duty. Here and there the heavy weight of exec- 
utive obligation is lightened by accents of beauti- 
ful sympathy and thought fulness for others. An 
instance of this, too little known, is his letter of May 
25, 1861, to the parents of young Colonel Ellsworth. 
who, as commander of a regiment of zouaves, had 
been sent to Alexandria. Virginia, to take posses- 
sion of Arlington Heights, for the protection of 



The Presidency and the Civil War 149 

Washington. The young ccnnniander hauled down, 
with his own hands, a Confederate flag floating 
above the Marshall Hotel. For this he was shot and 
killed by the owner of the place. He had studied 
law in Lincoln's office in Springfield, and his death 
was regarded by the President as a personal loss. 
Lincoln's letter of condolence contains a portrait 
of the gallant young officer as engaging as the final 
words to his parents are tender and appropriate.' 

In a similar spirit he wrote to tender the thanks 
of the nation to the Army of the Potomac after 
the battle of Fredericksburg. On the next day, 
December 23, 1862. he penned to Miss Fanny Mc- 
CuUough a note on her father's death, quite remo\'ed 
from the class of formal exi^ressions of sympathy. - 
This letter contains a hopeful outlook for grief : the 
President, with the mild philosophy of a father's 
faith in the mellowing fruits of sorrow, spoke of 
the legacy of a chastened memory, "a sad, sweet 
feeling in your heart of a purer and holier sort 
than you have known before." Li the face of con- 
ditions depending upon inventiveness and efficiency 
for their successful outcome, the tragedies of civil 
war are lightened for us to-day who read what the 
srreat man wTote in solitude and in shadow, when 

I Page 303, Appendix. 2 Page 308, Appendix. 



150 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

none could know better than he the hmitations inci- 
dent to the instruments of efficiency : 

The win of God prevails. In great contests each 
party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. 
Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God cannot 
be for and against the same thing at the same time. 
In the present civil war it is quite possible that God's 
purpose is something different from the purpose of 
either party ; and yet the human instrumentalities, 
working just as they do, are of the best adaptation 
to effect his purpose. I am almost ready to say that 
this is probably true ; that God wills this contest, 
and wills that it shall not end yet. By his mere great 
power on the minds of the now contestants, he could 
have either saved or destroyed the Union without a 
human contest. Yet the contest began. And, having 
begun, he could give the final victory to either side 
any day. Yet the contest proceeds. 

This sounds like the reflection of a man who 
loved to think deeply upon the phenomena of the 
world's affairs. In the light of his religious faith 
he sought to brace his judgment at moments when 
it was difficult to keep his bearings clear. In his 
order of November 15, 1862, he turned his deeper 
sentiments to practical account by enjoining "the 
orderly observance of the Sabbath by the officers 



The Presidency and the Civil War 151 

and men in the military and naval service." From 
the point of view of content and expression, this 
order is a literary model for its purpose. It indi- 
cates a felicitous union of the virtues of morality 
and discipline, with that historic sense of liberty 
which was the soul of the great cause that men were 
fighting and dying for. 

There is a biblical touch in much that Lincoln 
wrote. But in this he was as practical in spirit 
as when he drew an illustration from Euclid or from 
a historical document. The Proclamation for a 
National Fast Day, of August 12, 1861, pursuant 
to a resolution of Congress requesting the President 
to "recommend a day of public prayer, humiliation, 
and fasting," follows, in its midde paragraphs, the 
literary rhythm, and sometimes the phrase, of the 
English Prayer Book. 

And whereas it is fit and becoming in all people, at 
all times, to acknowledge and revere the supreme gov- 
ernment of God ; to bow in humble submission to his 
chastisements ; to confess and deplore their sins and 
transgressions, in the full conviction that the fear of 
the Lord is the beginning of wisdom ; and to pray with 
all fervency and contrition for the pardon of their 
offenses, and for a blessing upon their present and 
prospective action . . . I do earnestly recommend to 



152 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

all the people, and especially to ministers and teachers 
of religion, of all denominations, and to all heads of 
families, to observe and keep that day, according to 
their several creeds and modes of worship in all humil- 
ity and with all religious solemnity, to the end that the 
united prayer of the nation may ascend to the Throne 
of Grace, and bring down plentiful blessings upon 
our country. 

Four months after his inauguration,' the President 
sent to Congress his first message, on the eighty- 
fifth anniversary of American independence. This 
was written in language clear and elevated, and it 
contains several splendid paragraphs in which he 
carried the conflict above the manner of administra- 
tive discussion into the domain of political phi- 
losophy. Even here his style has the freedom and 
simplicity of the essayist inter])reting the significance 
of a familiar though epical theme. 

And this issue embraces more than the fate of these 
United States. It presents to the whole family of man 
the question whether a constitutional republic or de- 
mocracy — a government of the people by the same 
people — can or cannot maintain its territorial integrity 
against its own domestic foes. It presents the question 
whether discontented individuals, too few in numbers 
to control administration according to organic law in 



The Presidency and the Civil War 153 

any case, can always, upon the pretenses made in this 
case, or on any other i)retenses, or arbitrarily without 
any pretense, break up their government, and thus 
practically put an end to free government upon the 
earth. It forces us to ask : "Is there, in all republics, 
this inherent and fatal weakness?" "Must a govern- 
ment, of necessity, be too strong for the liberties of 
its own people, or too weak to maintain its own 
existence?" . . . 

This is essentially a people's contest. On the side 
of the Union it is a struggle for maintaining in the 
world that form and substance of goverment whose 
leading object is to elevate the condition of men — 
to lift artificial weights from all shoulders ; to clear 
the paths of laudable pursuit for all ; to afiford all an 
unfettered start, and a fair chance in the race of life. 
Yielding to partial and ' temporary departures, from 
necessity, this is the leading object of the government 
for whose existence w^e contend. . . . 

Our popular government has often been called an 
experiment. Two points in it our people have already 
settled — the successful establishing and the successful 
administering of it. One still remains — its successful 
maintenance against a formidable internal attempt to 
overthrow it. It is now for them to demonstrate to the 
world that those who can fairly carry an election can 
also suppress a rebellion; that ballots are the rightful 
and peaceful successors of bullets ; and that when bal- 



154 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

lots have fairly and constitutionally decided, there can 
be no successful appeal back to bullets ; that there can 
be no successful appeal, except to ballots them- 
selves, at succeeding elections. Such vv^ill be a great 
lesson of peace : teaching men that what they cannot 
take by an election, neither can they take it by a war ; 
teaching all the folly of being the beginners of war. 

There was no more profound student of the war 
than Lincoln. If there was sacrifice of self in 
thought, he made it beyond any contemporary. If 
disunion involved issues vital to the welfare of men 
everywhere in the modern world, no one else was 
so soundly convmced of the fact as he. His mind 
had become lucid from long contemplation on that 
historic sequence of events and motives which had 
ended in the rash resolve to break up the Union. 
The implications of the struggle were clearer to 
him than to any other living man. His conception 
as well as his penetration suggests the close parallel 
of Washington's studious solicitude for the destiny 
of the republic he had done so much to create. In a 
letter to Jefferson, his somewhat discordant secretary 
of state, Washington deplored "internal dissentions" 
and felt convinced that "if, instead of laying our 
shoulders to the machine after measures are decided 
on, one pulls this way and another that, before the 



The Presidency and the Civil War 155 

utility of the thing is fairly tried, it [the govern- 
ment] must inevitably be torn asunder; and in my 
opinion the fairest prospect of happiness and pros- 
perity that ever was presented to man will be lost 
perhaps for ever." 

It would be impossible for subsequent scholarship 
to conceive with exactness the personal meaning 
which Washington and Lincoln — those two great 
trustees of modern democracy — attached to the pa- 
tiently- and arduously-reared "edifice of American 
constitutional liberty." For both men the processes of 
interpretation would be implied in the words which 
the great Roman poet put into the mouth of his epic 
hero: "a part of which I was." It is possible only 
to approximate the mind of these master- workmen 
through their words, for they held a quality of 
fidelity and charity toward the republic such as a 
world artist feels for the offspring of his imagina- 
tion, or such as a parent feels for his family and 
the estate which his long toil has created for their 
future happiness and prosperity. 

Lincoln's letter to Horace Greeley, August 22. 
1862, illustrates to some degree this view of the mat- 
ter. So also does his reply to the Committee of 
United Religious Denominations from Chicago, 
written in the September following. The sixteen 



156 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

sentences of the Greeley letter follow each other as 
a series of closely connected propositions. Air. 
Greeley's unfriendly attitude toward the administra- 
tion is placed under the burden of self-defence with 
quiet but firm dignity. Then follow a dozen sen- 
tences stating consecutively, and from every im- 
portant angle of public opinion, the possible aspects 
of the President's "paramount object," namely, "to 
save the Union." Once for all. the great editor and 
those who read the Nczu York Tribune might know 
that, in Lincoln's judgment, the destiny of slavery 
was subordinate to the preservation of the Union of 
the States under the Constitution.^ Nor did the 
writer of the letter leave his attitude toward slavery 
in any uncertainty. "I intend no modification of 
my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every- 
where could be free." Undoubtedly, Mr. Greeley 
and many other sincere folk felt that the President 
had lost or had compromised his earlier views on the 
dominant issue of the party which had placed him 
at the head of the nation. Air. Greeley's myopia 
lay in the fact that he had not yet come to regard 
the integrity of the Union, so suddenly and recently 
challenged, as a matter of as great import as slavery 

1 The letters to Greeley and A. G- Hodges supplement the 
letter to Conkling. See Appendix, pages 304, 313 and 318, for 
all three. 



The Presidency and the Civil War 157 

itself. A President of less literary taste and skill 
might easily have considered (ireeley's ''Prater of 
Twenty Millions of People" worth fifty or more sen- 
tences, and would probably have assumed an attitude 
of defence throughout, with more prolixity than 
vision. 

The President's reply to the Committee frum 
Chicago represents his capacity for intellectual dis- 
cernment, outreaching that of men accustomed to 
look at but one side of the Cjuestion, important 
though that side could be admitted to be. He con- 
ceded the point that emancipation would "help us 
in Europe," and admitted that "slavery is at the 
root of the war." But he reminded his visitors that 
the fact that constitutional government was at stake 
furnished an ample principle around which to rally 
and unite the people. Lincoln must have often felt 
sick at heart at the nai\ete of well-meaning and 
intelligent people who would have him sink the ship 
they were in as a means of freeing it from a noxious 
custom employed by a certain proportion of the pas- 
sengers. He was planning to save the ship, and was 
hoping he might manage the noxious custom in order 
to achieve that great result. He had long wrestled 
with the propriety of emancipating the slaves as a 
military measure — was on the point, in fact, of 



158 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

doing this. He took the negative side of the ques- 
tion before the committee, as a judicially-minded 
statesman anxious to discover all that was implicit 
in that side before committing himself irrevocably 
to the other. Within a few days — September 22 — 
he gave out the Preliminary Emancipation Procla- 
mation, the prelude to the final proclamation of 
January i, 1863. This great state paper, historic 
and enlightened in its object and results, possesses 
the form and substance of an executive order, and 
has no other literary distinction. 

During this period the President wrote numerous 
letters. One of several that possess the flavor of 
literature was written to the king of Siam, to ac- 
knowledge the receipt of certain rich gifts from 
his majesty. It is a jewel six paragraphs long. 
The wording is flawless. Its style has the springy 
atmosphere of a May morning. Throughout it is 
characterized by delicately veiled good-humor and 
well-bred diplomacy. It is the matured effect fore- 
shadowed in the letters to Colonel Robert Allen and 
Mrs. O. H. Browning twenty-five years earlier. 

Great and good Friend: I have received your 
Majesty's two letters of the date of February 14, 1861. 
I have received in good condition the royal gift which 
accompanied those letters, namely, a sword of costly 



The Presidency and the Civil War 159 

materials and exquisite workmanship, a photographic 
likeness of your Majesty and of your Majesty's be- 
loved daughter, and also two elephant's tusks of length 
and magnitude, such as indicate that they could have 
belonged only to an animal which was a native of Siam. 

Your Majesty's letters show an understanding that 
our laws forbid the President from receiving these 
rich presents as personal treasures. They are there- 
fore accepted in accordance with your Alajesty's de- 
sire as tokens of your good will and friendship for the 
American people. Congress being now in session at 
this capital, I have had great pleasure in making known 
to them this manifestation of your Majesty's munifi- 
cence and kind consideration. 

Under their direction the gifts will be placed among 
the archives of the government where they will remain 
perpetually as tokens of mutual esteem and pacific 
disposition more honorable to both nations than any 
trophies of conquest could be. 

I appreciate most highly your Majesty's tender of 
good offices in forwarding to this Government a stock 
from which a supply of elephants might be raised on 
our soil. This Government would not hesitate to avail 
itself of so generous an offer if the object were one 
which could be made practically useful in the present 
condition of the United States. Our political juris- 
diction, however, does not reach a latitude so low as 
to favor the multiplication of the elephant, and steam 



160 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

on land as well as on water has been our best and most 
efficient agent of transportation in internal commerce. 

I shall have occasion at no distant day to transmit 
to your Majesty some token of indication of the high 
sense which this Government entertains of your Maj- 
esty's friendship. 

Meantime, wishing for your Majesty a long and 
happy life, and, for the generous and emulous people 
of Siam, the highest possible prosperity, I commend 
both to the blessing of Almighty God. 
Your good friend, 

Abraham Lincoln. 

Another of these letters was to General Hooker.^ 
Lincoln was in search of a general for the Army 
of the Potomac. McClellan had not shown suffi- 
cient vigor of offensive. Burnside had met his dis- 
aster at Fredericksburg. Lincoln chose Hooker in 
the face of the desire of Stanton and Halleck for 
Rosencrans. Nicolay and Hay think that the most 
remarkable feature of this letter "is the evidence 
it gives how completely the genius of President Lin- 
coln had by this time — the middle of his presidential 
term — risen to the full height of his great national 
duties and responsibilities." In composition, the let- 
ter is remarkable for its conformity to a single idea. 

I Page 311, Appendix. 



The Presidency and the Civil War 161 

That idea was to get a military service out of 
Hooker which the President had been sleeplessly 
anxious for, against Lee. After Hooker's ill-success 
at Chancellorsville, and Meade, his successor, had 
failed to follow up his advantage at Gettysburg. 
Lincoln longed for "a master mind" for the army. 
The letter mo\'es from commendation to courteous 
rebuke and admonition, in a single paragraph. It 
reveals the Commander-in-Chief's self-controlled 
eagerness to stimulate what he had by this time con- 
ceived to be the proper military .temper of an army 
leader. He felt there was something catching in 
Hooker's self-confidence and energy. Possibly he 
could restrain the general's faults, and make a suc- 
cessful head of an army out of him. So he wrote 
this letter, in all respects finely conceived and per- 
fectly set out in words. It is instinct with wisdom, 
and Hooker's comment upon reading it is reported 
to us by Noah Brooks: "He finished reading it 
almost with tears in his eyes, and as he folded it and 
l)ut it back in the breast of his coat, he said : 'That 
is such a letter as a father might write to his son. 
It is a beautiful letter, and although he was harder 
on me than I deserved, I will say that I love the 
man who wrote it !' " 

In the following April, when Lincoln made a rpiiet 



162 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

visit to Hooker's headquarters at Falmouth, Vir- 
ginia, the general asserted : "I am going straight to 
Richmond, if I live." This remark filled Lincoln 
with misgivings, from its over-confident tone. To 
Mr. Brooks he remarked : "It's about the worst thing 
I have seen since I have been down here." A month 
later when the news reached the President that 
Hooker had met Lee and had retreated from the 
south side of the Rappahannock, with hands clasped 
behind his back. "Lincoln walked up and down the 
room, saying, 'My God, my God, what will the coun- 
try say ! What will the country say !' " 

The man of large political knowledge, able as a 
constitutional lawyer, kindly in spirit and philosoph- 
ical in cast of mind, a master in artistry of expres- 
sion, unsurpassed in his ability to read and handle 
men, felt, as none other in the land could feel, the 
pangs of torment from the defeat of his armies. 
There had been suddenly thrust upon him, at close 
range, the novel and by no means congenial task of 
studying the art of war. This necessity he had 
not shirked. That he had approached this obliga- 
tion with his old-time mental grasp is evident from 
the letter he wrote to McClellan in February. 1862, 
containing a critical comparison between his own 
and that general's plan of campaign in Virginia. 



The Presidency and the Civil War 163 

Lincoln kept in the closest possible contact with his 
commanders and with the army of the East. He 
studied the geographical nature of the theater of 
war. He followed the movements of the troops, 
and agonized over the delays of his generals to push 
forward, and the prolongation of the strife. The 
military academy had long been typical of the South. 
The upper class of that section had long been ac- 
customed to military drill, and the use of arms had 
been the habitual disposition of both classes. The 
South had its "master mind" at the outset of hos- 
tilities. The North, with its absence of class cleav- 
age in the southern sense, with its growing cities 
and abounding industry, was predisposed to occu- 
pations disassociated with war or the dextrous use 
of arms. The North had to develop the spirit of 
war after the conflict began, and had to train and 
discover its "master mind." This process involved 
the campaigns against Donelson and Vicksburg. 
The process was completed at Chattanooga, the most 
picturesque and brilliant victory of the Civil War. 
In Grant, Lincoln at last found, in the domain of 
war, his long-expected "master mind." ^ 

Meanwhile the North was wearying of what at 
the moment seemed a fruitless slaughter of men in 

I Rhodes, "History of the Civil War" (1917), PP- 203, 303. 



164 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

the field. The sporadic disloyal elements actively 
sowed the seeds of discontent. There was criticism 
of the President's policy. None knew better than 
he that the failure of the Union generals to gain mil- 
itary successes lay at the heart of this criticism, and 
no one sympathized more than he with the feeling 
of the public mind. Both this feeling and the Presi- 
dent's attitude toward it are almost perfectly indi- 
cated by the following poem, written at the time by 
E. C. Stedman, which Lincoln read to his Cabinet. 

Back from the trebly crimsoned field 

Terrible words are thunder-tost, 
Full of the wrath that will not yield, 

Full of revenge for battles lost ! 

Hark to their echo, as it crost 
The Capital, making faces wan : 

End this murderous holocaust ; 
Abraham Lincoln, give us a man! 

Give us a man of God's own mould, 

Born to marshal his fellow-men ; 
One whose fame is not bought and sold 

At the stroke of a politician's pen; 

Give us the man of thousands ten, 
Fit to do as well as to plan ; 

Give us a rallying-cry, and then, 
Abraham Lincoln, mve us a maul 



The Presidency and the Civil War 165 

No leader to shirk the Ijoasting foe, 

And to march and countermarch our brave 
Till they fall like ghosts in the marshes low, 

And swamp-grass covers each nameless grave ; 

Nor another, whose fatal banners wave 
Aye in Disaster's shameful van ; 

Nor another, to bluster, and lie. and rave — 
Abraham Lincoln, give us a vian! 

Hearts are mourning in the North, 

While the sister rivers seek the main. 
Red with our life-blood flowing forth — 

Who shall gather it up again? 

Though we march to the battle-plain 
Firmly as when the strife began, 

Shall all our offerings be in vain? 
Abraham Lincoln, give us a man! 

Is there never one in all the land. 

One on whose might the Cause may lean? 
Are all the common ones so grand. 

And all the titled ones so mean? 

What if your failure may have been 
In trying to make good bread from bran. 

From worthless metal a weapon keen ? — 
Abraham Lincoln, find us a tiiaii! 



166 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

O, we will follow him to the death, 

Where the foeman's fiercest columns are ! 
O, we will use our latest breath, 

Cheering for every sacred star! 

His to marshal us high and far ; 
Ours to battle, as patriots can 

When a Hero leads the Holy War ! — 
Abraham Lincoln, give us a man! 

An opportunity soon came to Lincoln to address 
himself to this discontent and to indicate the logic 
of his own policy. He was invited by his old friends 
to be present at a mass meeting of "Unconditional 
Union men" to be held in Springfield, early in Sep- 
tember. His duties did not admit of his attendance, 
and. instead, he sent a letter to his old-time friend, 
James C. Conkling, to be read to the people. To 
Mr. Conkling he sent also the following personal 
note: 

My dear Conkling: 

I cannot leave here now. Herewith is a letter in- 
stead. You are one of the best public readers. I have 
but one suggestion — read it very slowly. And now 
God bless you and all good Union men. 
Yours as ever, 

A. Lincoln. 



The Presidency and the Civil War 167 

This letter,' which Lincohi referred to as his 
"stump speech" and which was reproduced as a good 
specimen of Nineteenth Century prose by an English 
scholar, John Earle, then professor of Anglo-Saxon 
at Oxford Universit}-, in his well-known work on 
"English Prose," is one of the most complete exam- 
ples he has left us of his talent for grasping a com- 
plex national situation and reducing it to plain terms, 
by skill and simplicity of analysis. It was influential 
in checking the popular discontent and in smoothing 
the somewhat dubious path to his renomination the 
next year. It helped to clear up the minds of many 
who were perplexed by the Emancipation Procla- 
mation — of some, too, who were unfriendly to that 
act. The letter possesses remarkable unity and 
movement, and an evident note of deep sincerity. 
It should be read as a whole — even as its great 
author suggested, "very slowly." Its significance 
lies in part in the feeling it expresses that Lincoln 
had now reached the point of strong confidence in 
the wisdom of his course thus far. The burden 
of novelty and doubt was lifting; there w^as a note 
of spiritual yet restrained elation in what had al- 
ready been achieved — an intuition of happier for- 
tune just ahead. 

I Page 313, Appendix. 



168 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

Although the letter to Conkling is argumentative 
in purport, it must always remain a notable and his- 
toric composition — the best resume we now have of 
the motive and results of the administration during 
the first half of the civil struggle. As a piece of 
literary prose, it creates, by sure and agile strokes, 
an ensemble of all the effective phases of public 
thought; it rises to a summit of hope and prophecy 
for the republic — rhythmic — arresting — a foreshad- 
owing of the sweet and solemn music he was so 
soon to create. 



CHAPTER IX 

FROM GETTYSBURG TO THE SECOND INAUGURAL 

It is equally true of the pen as of the pencil, that what is 
drawn from life and from the heart alone bears the impress 
of immortality. — Tuckervtan. 

I call therefore a complete and generous education that which 
fits a man to perform justly, skillfully, and magnanimously all 
the offices, both public and private, of peace and war. — Milton. 

Less than three months after the letter to Con-, 
khng, Lincoln wrote and delivered the Gettysburg 
Address. There are those who regard this as the 
most important literary performance growing out of 
the Civil War — that of all that was written during 
that period, it will longest endure. Certain it is 
that this Address is our most perfect hymn in prose. 
It has the quiet yet stately roll of cathedral har- 
mony. In thought and emotion it is deeply impres- 
sive and spiritual. Miltonic in conception and 
rhythm, it is a rich and satisfying intellectual pos- 
session to those who have stored up its sacred lines 
in memory. In Lowell's phrase, 

They mingle with our life's ethereal part, 
Sweetening and gathering sweetness evermore, 
By beauty's franchise disenthralled of time. 
169 



170 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

Many events united to inspire this great utter- 
ance. Primary among these were the military. 
After Hooker's loss of the battle of Chancellors- 
ville, Lincoln was again in search of a general. 
Hooker remained in command of the eastern army 
until Lee, planning to transfer the devastation of 
war to the North and seize the vast industrial re- 
sources of Pennsylvania, moved steadily northward 
through Maryland. Hooker wished to make a 
countermarch against Richmond. Dissuaded by the 
President, who preferred the destruction of Lee's 
army, he vigilantly paralleled Lee's direction, merely 
to cover the important cities of Philadelphia, Bal- 
timore, and Washington. Suddenly he resigned, 
and Meade, a "lean, tall, studious"" subordinate 
officer, whom Lincoln trusted, was appointed in his 
place. Meade, whose first impression of the sealed 
communication bearing his appointment was of an 
official order "to relieve or arrest" him, wrote to his 
wife that "it appears to be God's will for some good 
purpose — at any rate I had nothing to do but to 
accept and exert my utmost abilities to command 
success, ... I am moving at once against Lee. . . . 
A battle will decide the fate of our country and our 
cause." The two armies struggled for the victory 
through three days of carnage, July 1-3, 1863. Both 



Gettysburg to the Second Inaugural 171 

sides lost approximately one-fourth of their num- 
bers, and Lee, feeling the impracticability of his 
northern venture, retreated to the south side of the 
Potomac. Simultaneously with Meade's success, 
Vicksburg fell to Grant. These successes for the 
North were pivotal. The Union would probably 
triumph and slavery would be abolished. A vision 
of the past and future America rose like a new 
hope in the soul of the war-worn President. Among 
certain governors of States a movement was set on 
foot to establish a national cemetery at Gettysburg. 
The dedicatory exercises were set for November 19, 
and the venerable Edward Everett, born during 
Washington's presidency, and wearing many honors, 
as an ex-president of Harvard, as United States 
Senator, as Minister to England, as Secretary of 
State, and who had been a candidate for President 
against Lincoln, was asked to make the principal 
address of the occasion. The President was in- 
vited to attend, and later it was suggested that he 
make such "dedicatory remarks" as he deemed ap- 
propriate. His Address, partly written at Wash- 
ington, was finished in the house of his host at 
Gettysburg.^ 

1 The most authoritative account of the composition of 
Lincoln's Gettysburg Address is by his secretary, John G. 
Nicolay, in the Century Magazine, Vol. 47:596 ff- Interesting 



172 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

Everett's "classical" address received well-de- 
served praise. It was listened to for two hours by 
an audience in the neighborhood of one hundred 
thousand people. It is an elaborate and intellectual 
production. Its patriotic sentiment is loft}' and 
admirable, and its fluent eulogy must have been 
pleasing to the expectant multitude. But as a com- 
position it suffers from its academic garb and over- 
wrought conceptions. Nor is it supported by emo- 
tion or great insight. Its brilliancy is less interpre- 
tive than verbal. Its weakness in this particular 
was probably apparent to Everett himself as he 
listened to Lincoln's address, which followed. It is 
reported that, when Lincoln congratulated him on 
his success, he replied : "Ah, Mr. President, how 
gladly would I exchange all my hundred pages to 
have been the author of your twenty lines." 

There is much unconscious poetry in the more 
deeply-felt utterances of Abraham Lincoln. No 
other writer of American prose has quite matched 

accounts of those who heard the Address are to be found in 
W. H. Lambert's "The Gettysburg Address;" "Recollections of 
Lincoln," by General James Grant Wilson ; Putnam's Magasine 
for February, 1909; and "Lincoln at Gettysburg," by Clark E. 
Carr. A brief and interesting account by an eye-witness is by 
Junius B. Remensnyder, The Outlook. February 13, 1918, p- 
243. An excellent summary of useful and interesting informa- 
tion has been compiled by Mr. Lsaac Markens, of New York 
City, in his "Lincoln's Masterpiece," privately printed. For 
additional comment on the Address, see Appendix, page 278. 



Gettysburg to the Second Inaugural 173 

him in this respect. His masterpieces have often 
the cadence of epic hnes, and easily fall into the 
movement of musical measures. i\.ny one with an 
elementary knowledge of metrics may test for him- 
self this quality of certain passages in Lincoln's 
writings. It will be found that his best prose has 
as much of the modulation of rhythm as the best 
of Ruskin's, without the over-fluent character of 
the latter. No one has expressed this quality of 
Lincoln's prose with more appreciation than the 
late Richard Watson Gilder in his eloquent little 
volume on "Lincoln the Leader." Speaking of Lin- 
coln's "traits of pathos and imagination," he re- 
marks that "Lincoln's prose, at its height and when 
his spirit was stirred by aspiration and resolve, af- 
fects the soul like noble music. Indeed, there may 
be found in all his great utterances a strain which 
is like the leading motive — the Leit-motif — in a 
musical drama; a strain of mingled pathos, heroism, 
and resolution. That is the strain in the tw^o inaug- 
urals, in the 'Gettysburg Address,' and in his letter 
of consolation to a bereaved mother, which moves 
the hearts of generation after generation." 

An interesting essay on "The Poetry of Lincoln" 
was contributed to the North Auicrican Review some 
years since by James Raymond Perry. The author 



174 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

arranged certain of Lincoln's addresses into lines 
to illustrate their rhythmical character. The Get- 
tysburg Address was shown to fall into the follow- 
ing metrical form : 

Fourscore and seven years ago 

Our fathers brought forth upon this continent 

A new nation conceived in liberty, 

And dedicated to the proposition 

That all men are created equal. 

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, 

Testing whether that nation, or any nation 

So conceived and so dedicated 

Gan long endure. We are met 

On a great battle-field of that war. 

We have come to dedicate a portion of 

That field as a final resting-place 

For those who here gave their lives 

That that nation might live. 

It is altogether fitting and proper 

That we should do this. 

But in a larger sense 
We cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, 
We cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, 
Living and dead, who struggled here. 
Have consecrated it far above our power 
To add or detract. The world will little note 



Gettysburg to the Second Inaugural 175 

Nor long remember what we say here, 

But it can never forget what they did here. 

It is for us, the living, ratlier, to be dedicated here 

To the unfinished work which they who fought here 

Have thus far so nobly advanced. 

It is. rather for us to be here dedicated 

To the great task remaining before us ; 

That from these honored dead we take 

Increased devotion to that cause for which 

They gave the last full measure of devotion ; 

That we here highly resolve that these dead 

Shall not have died in vain, that this nation, 

Under God, shall have a new birth of freedom ; 

And that government of the people, 

By the people, and for the people. 

Shall not perish from the earth. 

However successfully, by the laws of metrical 
measures, we may artificially dispose the more no- 
table of Lincoln's prose productions as evidence of 
their poetic quality, the final argument for their 
musical character is revealed in their thought-con- 
tent. They fit De Ouincey's description of the "liter- 
ature of power." They move, but not so much by 
their beautiful words, like Poe's poems, as by the 
thought which commands the words. Lincoln is to 
be interpreted first of all as a man who brought 
powerful thought to bear upon the theme in which 



176 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

he was deeply interested. He wrote slowly, because 
he found that words were but feeble media for the 
expression of great consciousness and its atmosphere 
of feeling. Therefore he seems partial to simple, 
idiomatic language when it will more swiftly meet 
and carry his thought. It has been customary to 
mention the large proportion of Anglo-Saxon de- 
rived words in the Gettysburg Address. On the 
other hand, one is struck by the prevalence of Latin- 
derived words in the delightfully written acknowl- 
edgment to the king of Siam, reprinted in the pre- 
vious chapter. As a matter of fact, Lincoln, when 
he was in the writing mood, brooded over his words, 
tried his verbal resources to their utmost, and then 
chose the best he had in hand. His letter to Colonel 
Allen, in his young manhood, more than twenty-five 
years before the Gettysburg Address, shows a de- 
cided leaning toward words of foreign derivation, 
while his letters to his step-brother, Johnson, fifteen 
years later than the Allen letter, prefer words of 
English ancestry. Lincoln had little interest in the 
philology of language. His main concern was with 
the meaning and extent of his vocabulary, and his 
leading principle of composition seems to have been 
to use the expression, from whatever origin, that 
would satisfy the reader's or listener's understand- 



Gettysburg to the Second Inaugural 177 

ing. His devotion to this principle, or method, some- 
times led him into the use of words or phrases of 
less dignity than the context would call for.' 

There may be some question whether the actual 
words of the Gettysburg Address are chosen in every 
instance with as excellent discrimination as the 
thought indicated was conceived. It is, however, the 
special consciousness they embody that is the soul of 
the poetry they suggest. Lincoln's unique person- 
ality, the moral character of the great problem round 
which his political experience turned, his whole- 
souled sympathy for the welfare of the mass of man- 
kind, together with his righteous hatred of special 
privilege and oppression of any kind, gave him the 

I There are many instances of this, but a single one with his 
own comment will suffice. In his message to Congress, July 4, 
1861, speaking of the "ingenious sophism" by which southern 
leaders had drugged the pul)lic mind of their section, he re- 
ferred to the rebellion as "thus sugar-coated." Defrees, the 
Public Printer, ventured to remind the President that the 
l)hrase was unbecoming a state-paper. Lincoln replied : "Well, 
Defrees, if you think the time will ever come when the people 
will not understand what 'sugar-coated' means, I'll alter it ; 
otherwise, I think I'll let it go." His response to a delegation 
from the National Union League, which called to notify him of 
his renomination, combines language that is unexceptional with 
the purely homespun. See .\ppendix, pp. 279-280. 

Occasionallj' Lincoln's homebred phrases were aphoristic and 
have become permanently poi)ular. An instance of this is 
taken from a report of a si)eech he made at Clinton, 111., Sep- 
tember 8, 1858, between the second and third debates with 
Douglas. At that time he is reported to have used the famous 
dictum : "You can fool all the people some of the time, and 
some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all the 
people all the time." 



178 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

power, after the victories over Lee and Pemberton. 
to pen this ripened conception of democracy in 
America. In the Gettysburg speech, he seems to 
have taken the body of his conviction, derived from 
many elements of observation and study, and fash- 
ioned it, like a master artist, into a single life-like 
conception. His thought is sculptured more nearly 
after the lines of the classical than the Gothic. Like 
Angelo, he arrived at beauty by striking out the 
superfluous. 

Lincoln's imagination was interfused with a vital 
strain of social sympathy — sympathy for his fel- 
lows. For them he aspired. He loved to contem- 
plate the self-improvement of the less fortunate — of 
which his own case was so wonderful an exemplifi- 
cation. His age and environment accounted for this 
peculiarity of sympathy as well as the strong political 
turn of his native fancy. Thus, his mind spent its 
force in interpretative rather than in creative activ- 
ity; he became the outstanding spokesman of the 
public opinion of his time and country — the opinion 
which he himself did so much to shape and define. 

Out of his sym|)athelic experience grew the spon- 
taneous words of his farewell speech at Springfield. 
It shaped his finely-tempered First Inaugural. Its 
spirit is seen in the historic emancipation paper, in 



Gettysburg to the Second Inaugural 179 

his thanksgiving and fast-day proclamations, in his 
treatment of his critics, and in his devout rehgious 
incHnations. It even influenced his formal commu- 
nications to the Congress, in which he discussed the 
affairs of state in the light of a clear purpose and a 
more benignant day. In his annual message follow- 
ing his visit to Gettysburg, he said : 

In the midst of other cares, however important, we 
must not lose sight of the fact that the war power is 
still our main reliance. To that power alone can we 
look, yet for a time, to give confidence to the people in 
the contested regions that the insurgent power will not 
again overrun them. Until that confidence shall be 
established, little can be done anywhere for what is 
called reconstruction. Hence our chiefest care must 
still be directed to the army and navy, who have thus 
far borne their harder part so nobly and well. And 
it may be esteemed fortunate that in giving the greatest 
efficiency to these indispensable arms, we do also hon- 
orably recognize the gallant men, from commander to 
sentinel, who compose them, and to whom, more than 
to others, the world mnst stand indebted for the home 
of freedom disenthralled, regenerated, enlarged, and 
perpetuated. 

It is doubtful whether any other writer of English 
lias interpreted with such humanity and noble mean- 



180 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

ing the democratic function of an army. To Lin- 
coln, the war meant the perpetuation of self-govern- 
ment in America and its vindication to the rest of 
the world. It is interesting to contemplate the extent 
to which the rest of the world, fermenting under the 
dead weight of an effete regime, has felt the neces- 
sity of turning to this "home of freedom" for assist- 
ance, as well as example, in perpetuating its own best 
life, "disenthralled, regenerated, and enlarged," dur- 
ing the half century since that message to Congress 
was written. 

Combining with singular felicity Lincoln's pas- 
sion for political democracy and his interest in men. 
is his address of August 22, 1864, to the citizen sol- 
diery constituting the i66th Ohio Volunteers: 

Soldiers : I suppose you are going home to see your 
families and friends. For the services you have done 
in this great struggle in which we are all engaged, I 
present you sincere thanks for myself and the country. 

I almost always feel inclined, when I happen to say 
anything to soldiers, to impress upon them, in a few 
brief remarks, the importance of success in this con- 
test. It is not merely for to-day, but for all time to 
come, that we should perpetuate for our children's 
children that great and free government which we 
have enjoyed all our lives. I beg you to remember 



Gettysburg to the Second Inaugural 181 

this, not merely for my sake, but for yours. I happen, 
temporarily, to occupy the White House. I am a living 
witness that any one of your children may look to come 
here as my father's child has. It is in order that each one 
of you may have, through this free government which 
we have enjoyed, an open field and a fair chance for 
your industry, enterprise, and intelligence ; that you 
may all have equal privileges in the race of life, with 
all its desirable human aspirations. It is for this the 
struggle should be maintained, that we may not lose 
our birthright — not only for one. but for two or three 
years. The nation is worth fighting for, to secure such 
an inestimable jewel. 

The heart of this beautiful address constitutes a 
simple song of liberty and equality. Air. Perry has 
arranged its rhythmical lines, leaving out the prose 
introduction, as follows : 

It is not merely for to-day. but for all time to come. 
That we should perpetuate for our children's children 
That great and free government which we have enjoyed 
All our lives. I beg you to consider this. 
Not merely for my sake, but for yours. 
I happen, temporarily, to occupy the White House. 
I am a living witness that any of your children 
May look to come here as my father's child has. 
It is in order that each one of you may have, 
Through this free government which we have enjoyed. 



182 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

An open field and a fair chance for your industry, 

Enterprise, and intelligence ; that you may all have 

Equal privileges in the race of life, 

With all its desirable human aspirations. 

It is for this the struggle should be maintained, 

That we may not lose our birthright — 

Not only for one, but for two or three years. 

The nation is worth fighting for 

To secure such an inestimable jewel. 

Of course it is not maintained that this is poetry. 
It lacks the incommunicable witness of that form of 
literature. But it has, like the Gettysburg Address 
and the two inaugurals, a high and serious theme 
and the elements of pure rhythm and melody. Many 
of Lincoln's lines are the proper stuff for recitative, 
and if an oratorio might be written on a political 
subject of epic moment and impressiveness, ample 
materials could be found in the literature he has 
left us. 

The reason of deepest significance — the reason 
which is divinely spiritual — why Lincoln's greater 
writings carry the virtue of immortality, is discern- 
ible in the impression they create of his singular 
unselfishness. This high qtiality of character re- 
mained steadfast through joy and gloom. A remark- 
able bit of testimony on this point is contained in a 



Gettysburg to the Second Inaugural 183 

memorandum the President wrote in August, 1864, 
when he fek that he had so far lost the confidence 
of the people that he could not be chosen again to 
the Executive office : 

This morning, as for some days past, it seems ex- 
ceedingly probable that this administration will not be 
reelected. Then it will be my duty to so cooperate 
with the President-elect as to save the Union between 
the election and the inauguration ; as he will have se- 
cured his election on such ground that he cannot pos- 
sibly save it afterward. A. Lincoln. 

After his second triumph at the polls, he had Mr. 
Hay open the sealed envelop containing the memo- 
randum, and read it to the Cabinet, after he had 
reminded the members that it was the paper on the 
back of which he had asked them to sign their names 
without knowledge of the contents. 

In an address to a party of serenaders on the day 
of the election, when it appeared that the result of 
the contest would be in his favor, he closed with this 
characteristic sentiment : 

I am thankful to God for this approval of the people ; 
but, while deeply grateful for this mark of their con- 
fidence in me, if I know my heart, my gratitude is free 
from any taint of personal triumph. I do not impugn 
the motives of any one opposed to me. It is no picas- 



184 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

ure to me to triumph over any one, biit I give thanks 
to the Almighty for this evidence of the people's reso- 
lution to stand by free government and the rights of 
humanity. 

The terrible destruction of the war between the 
two sections of his beloved country had perfected 
the quality and spirit of his own service. He felt 
that no sacrifice was too great in behalf of a re- 
united nation. The Union was dearer to him than 
life; and as dear to him as his own life were the 
lives of the devoted soldiers who had made an equal 
sacrifice — in his feeling, a greater sacrifice than all 
others. 

The effect of the long tragedy did not, as might 
have been looked for. reduce the beauty and 
potency of his style and imagination. It tended to 
establish and perfect it. In November, he wrote 
the beautiful letter to Mrs. Bixby, to which Richard 
Watson Gilder alluded as moving with consolation 
"the hearts of generation after generation." Like 
the Gettysburg Address, this perfect gem of prose 
literature must become a cherished personal posses- 
sion to give one its full effect of lyric charm and 
excellence. The prose form of this composition may 
l)e read in the .\ppendix to this xolume,^ but to un- 

I Page 321, Appendix. 



Gettysburg to the Second Inaugural 185 

derstand its peculiar lyric unity and movement, it is 
helpful to see it in the rhythmic arranc^ement which 
Mr. Perry has given it : 

Dear Madam : 

I have been shown in the files of the War Department 

A statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts 

That you are the mother of five sons 

Who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel 

How weak and fruitless must be any words of mine 

Which should attempt to beguile you from the grief 

Of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain 

From tendering to you the consolation that may be 

found 
In the thanks of the Republic they died to save. 
I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage 
The anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only 
The cherished memory of the loved and lost, 
And the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid 
So costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom. 



CHAPTER X 

THE CLOSING TRIUMPH OF A GREAT CAREER 

It is so with all essential literature. It has the quality to 
move you, and you can never mistake it, if you have any blood 
in you. And it has also the power to instruct you which is as 
effective as it is subtle, and which no research or systematic 
method can ever rival. — IVnodrozv Wilson. 

Lincoln's reelection brought him face to face with 
a second phase of the problem imposed by secession. 
History was full of instances of the military sub- 
ordination of insurgent populations for the purpose 
of preserving national integrity and sovereignty. 
But the restoration of organic political units, each 
bearing a republican form of self-government, 
which had contended by long warfare for the right 
to maintain a political grouping different from that 
of their original connection, presented a situation 
that was novel, if not untried. With no Constitu- 
tional provision for such a contingency, the case 
clearly called for original treatment. In the midst 
of a multitude of other and more pressing duties, 
the President had looked forward to the responsi- 
bility of reconstruction. The legal aspects of the 

186 



The Closing Triumph 187 

case were delicate and could easily provoke dispute. 
The question presented itself: Had the constitu- 
tional connection between the loyal and disloyal 
States actually been broken by defection and the 
paralysis of civil war, or was secession to be treated 
as an incident of unsuccessful revolt within an "inde- 
structible Union of indestructible States" ? The 
latter seems to have been Lincoln's view of the 
matter. It implied a voluntary resumption of the 
former civil relations on the initiative of the erring 
States, under new constitutions fitting the changes 
produced by the war. The readjustment might be 
made, it seemed to him, free from the needless bur- 
dens and confusion which could easily beset the 
condition of conquered States, and in a spirit of 
simplicity which would inspire feelings of good 
temper and good faith for the future. 

In such a frame of mind he cautiously laid the 
foundation of a policy of reconstruction. The as- 
sassin's bullet closed the doer forever upon the suc- 
cess of that policy. Fortunately for posterity, that 
tragedy was deferred until after it inherited Lin- 
coln's Second Inaugural Address. 

As the months following the election Ijrought him 
nearer the fourth of March, 1865, and brought with 
their lapse the growing certainty of Lee's defeat. 



188 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

Lincoln's physical declension was observed by those 
nearest him. The burden of the past four years told 
heavily upon his bodily strength and wrought a 
marked change in his appearance. The rugged face 
had become strangely spiritual. His eye, always 
kindly in its effect, now revealed the saintly aspect 
of soul chastened by long toil and suffering. "His 
whole appearance, poise, and bearing had marvel- 
ously changed," says the Hon. James Harlan. "He 
was in fact transfigured. That indescribable sad- 
ness which had previously seemed to be an adaman- 
tine element of his very being, had been suddenly 
changed for an equally and indescribable expression 
of serene joy, as if conscious that the great purpose 
of his life had been achieved." ^ 

The spiritual triumph of Abraham Lincoln is 
clothed in the unfading words which, in the Second 
Inaugural, tell the story of the Civil War with the 
same fidelity which the address at Gettysburg gave 
to the philosophy of American democracy.- Both 
addresses unite, in Lincoln's characteristic manner, 
the intellectual and emotional elements of style. The 
first of these elements predominates in the dedica- 
tion address; the second element is the more im- 
pressi^•e in the inaugural. The theme of the earlier 

I Tarbcll. II : 232. 2 Page 280, Appendix. 



The Closing Triumph 189 

speech is directed to a sinL;le end. That of the 
inaugural has a double purpose: to comment upon 
the more striking events of the pending tragedy, and 
to divine their meaning in the light of religion. The 
thought of the first is more elevated; that of the 
second is familiar and touching. The language of 
the one is a prophecy of freedom; that of the other 
is radiant with the Christian spirit of peace. One 
addresses the historic sense and discernment ; the 
other appeals directly and powerfully to the heart. 
Both incite to high ideals of conduct, one in the 
accents of epic, the other in the voice of lyric, song. 
In the first part of the Second Inaugural, one 
reads a truthful survey of the war. A parallel 
study is made of the motives and expectations of 
both sides. There is a certain staccato effect in the 
emotions that succeed each other as the sentences 
approach the relation of the terrible contest to the 
purposes of the Almighty. It was an unaccustomed 
step for a statesman to speak with such frankness 
and intimacy of a great war as God's means of 
purging a nation of its inveterate vices. He bears 
in his words the burden of shame long felt by those 
— by generations, even — whose spirit had bowed 
under the humiliation of human slavery in their 
midst. He speaks the prayer of a repentant nation 



190 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

"that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass 
away." Was so fierce a slaughter, among men of 
the same race equally devoted to liberty, in accord 
with "those divine attributes which the believers in 
a living God always ascribe to him" ? And was the 
blood poured out on the battlefields due to the judg- 
ment of the Lord, which is "true and righteous alto- 
gether"? Such was Lincoln's faith. He found no 
contradiction between that faith and that perfection 
of the human spirit which could battle with equal 
firmness and regret. With the picture of the death- 
grapple before him, he could still say : 

With malice toward none ; with charity for all ; with 
firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, 
let us strive on to finish the work we are in ; to bind 
up the nation's wounds ; to care for him who shall have 
borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan — 
to do all which may achieve a just and lasting peace 
among ourselves, and with all nations. 

Lincoln's own modest commentary on the Second 
Inaugural was drawn out by a letter of appreciation 
from the distinguished journalist, Thurlow Weed. 
Lincoln's acknowledgment, March 15, is a precious 
bit of interpretation of his own feeling and purpose 
as he comiposed this remarkable state-paper: 



The Closing Triumph 191 

Dear Mr. Weed : Every one likes a compliment. 
Thank you for yours on my little notification speech 
and on the recent inaugural address. I expect the 
latter to wear as well as — perhaps better than — any- 
thing I have produced ; but I believe it is not immedi- 
ately popular. Men are not flattered by being shown 
that there has been a difiference of purpose between 
the Almighty and them. To deny it, however, in this 
case is to deny that there is a God governing the world. 
It is a truth which I thought needed to be told, and, as 
whatever of humiliation there is in it falls most directly 
on myself, I thought others might afford for me to 
tell it. Truly yours, 

A. Lincoln. 

The Second Inaugural and Lincoln's comment 
upon it afford definite personal testimony with re- 
spect to the much mooted question of his religious 
beliefs. During his lifetime he was suspected of 
infidelity by the over-confidently pious. As late as 
1874, in a lecture on Lincoln, Herndon asserted that 
his former law partner held anti-Christian views. 
Among the credulous, perhaps nothing so easily casts 
a shadow over a man's reputation as the circulation 
of some doubt about his religious stability. It is to 
the credit of the Christian sentiment of our day that 
the contemporary distrust of Lincoln's religious sin- 
cerity and conviction has largely vanished into enij)- 



192 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

tiness. Lincoln was, indeed, strictly independent in 
his religious reflections. He accepted nothing as 
final on the authority of priesthood or theology. In 
religion as well as in politics, his reason had to be 
satisfied before he trusted to emotion. His legal 
training, as well as his type of mind, inclined him 
to call for the evidence in any important matter. 
Mr. John W. Bunn, and others of Springfield, who 
knew him well, have averred to the writer that Lin- 
coln was a regular attendant at the services of the 
Presbyterian church in that city ; but he united with 
no denomination. From childhood he was a reader 
of the English Bible, and became more devoted in 
his study of it during his Presidency. He was par- 
ticularly interested in the New Testament, but was 
well acquainted with the Old. Writing to Speed 
at one time, he said: "I am profitably engaged in 
reading the Bible. Take all of this book upon reason 
that you can and the balance upon faith, and you 
will live and die a better man." 

Few men have afforded a story of religious evo- 
lution more interesting than Lincoln's. His experi- 
ence, perhaps, was not strikingly exceptional ; but it 
was definite and personally conducted, and brought 
satisfaction to him in trouble. Fresh and interesting 
light upon this subject has been presented by Mr. 



The Closing Triumph 193 

Henry B. Rankin, in his "Personal Recollections of 
Abraham Lincoln." In his important chapter on 
"What Religion Meant to Lincoln," Mr. Rankin 
reproduces his mother's account of Lincoln's own 
statement of his religious views, given to her in her 
home during his race for Congress when his oppo- 
nents were seeking to discredit him. Declaring that 
his own thinking", as well as his contact with men 
of "widest culture" had opened up to him a "sea of 
questionings," through which he had groped his way 
to "a higher grasp of thought" reaching beyond this 
life with "clearness and satisfaction," he continued: 

I do not see that I am more astray — though perhaps 
in a different direction — than many others whose points 
of view differ widely from each other in the sectarian 
denominations. They all claim to be Christians, and 
interpret their several creeds as infallible ones. Yet 
they differ and discuss these questionable subjects with- 
out settling them with any mutual satisfaction among 
themselves. 

I doubt the possibility, or propriety, of settling tlie 
religion of Jesus Christ in the models of man-made 
creeds and dogmas. It was a s])irit in the life that lie 
laid stress and taught, if I read aright. I know I see 
it to be so with m?. 

The fundamental truths reported in the four gospels 
as from the lii)S of Jesus Christ, and that I heard from 



194 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

the lips of my mother, are settled and fixed moral 
precepts with me. I have concluded to dismiss from 
my mind the debatable wrangles that once perplexed 
me with distractions that stirred up, but never abso- 
lutely settled anything. I have tossed them aside with 
the doubtful differences which divide denominations — 
sweeping them all out of my mind among the non- 
essentials. I have ceased to follow such discussions 
or to be interested in them. 

I cannot without mental reservations assent to long 
and complicated creeds and catechisms. If the church 
would ask simply for assent to the Savior's statement 
of the substance of the law : "Thou shalt love the 
Lord God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and 
with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself," — that 
church would I gladly unite with.^ 

With Lincoln, religion was regarded as practically 
important, or it was valueless. An instance of this 
attitude, very well known, was afforded during the 
Presidential campaign. To ascertain the nature of 
the vote in Springfield, a house-to-house canvass was 
made. Of the twenty-three clergymen in his home 
town, all but three "signified their intention to vote 
against Lincoln." He expressed his disappointment 
at this to Dr. Bateman, to whom he remarked, "as 

I Rankin, "Personal Recollfctions of Abraham Lincoln," 
pp. 324-326. 



The Closing Triumph 195 

if thinking aloud" : "These gentlemen know that 
Judge Douglas does not care a cent whether slavery 
in the territories is voted up or voted down, for he 
has repeatedly told them so. They know that I do 
care." Lincoln then drew from his pocket a copy 
of the New Testament and continued : "I do not so 
understand this book." On the matter of his faith, 
he said : **I know that there is a God and that he 
hates injustice and slavery. I see the storm coming 
and I know that His hand is in it. If He has a place 
and work for me, and I think He has, I believe I 
am ready. I am nothing, but truth is everything; 
I know I am right because I know that liberty is 
right, for Christ teaches it, and Christ is God. I 
have told them that a house divided against itself 
cannot stand, and Christ and reason say the same, 
and they will find it so."^ 

Apparently nothing in his experience had. even 
momentarily, diverted his faith in the precepts of 
the Bible; and his life-long practice of personal sac- 
rifice as well as his native sympathy for the unfor- 
tunate, shining out in so much that he did and said, 
entered into the creation of that beautiful spirit of 
charity for which Lincoln will ever be remembered. 
The soul of that spirit had at last been embodied in 

I Carpenter, "Six Months in the White House," pp. 162-164. 



196 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

language whose union of sense and rhythm was the 
utmost that prose could give, in the inaugural which 
humanity will probably wish to quote. 

"As long as the heart has passions, 
As long as life has woes." 

There had been numerous foreshadowings of these 
ripened convictions. In a letter to Cuthbert Bullitt, 
in 1862, in which he swept away the criticism made 
against the Federal blockade of New Orleans on the 
ground of a strong element of loyalists in Louisiana, 
Lincoln stated that he should do all he could to 
save the government. "I shall do nothing in mal- 
ice. What I deal wnth is too vast for malicious 
dealing."^ In April, 1864, he wrote a letter to Albert 
G. Hodges of Kentucky,- in justification of his policy 
of employing negro soldiers in the army. The letter 
is a sagacious vindication of a policy that had of- 
fended the sensibilities of certain friends of the 
Union. Its closing paragraph, however, is especially 
significant as an admission of the flexible nature of 
his war policy, and as foresliowing the tenor of that 
religious intuition to which he gave such free and 
splendid expression upon taking the oath of office 
again a year afterward. In it he wrote : 

I Page 307, Appendix. 2 Page 318, Appendix. 



The Closing Triumph 197 

I claim not to have controlled events, but confess 
plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at the 
end of three years' struggle, the nation's condition is 
not what either party, or any man, devised or expected. 
God alone can claim it. Whither it is tending seems 
plain. If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, 
and wills also that we of the North, as well as you of 
the South, shall pay fairly for our complicity in that 
wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause to 
attest and revere the justice and goodness of God. 

"All deep things are Song," said Carlyle. If the 
chaste and limpid speech in which Lincoln had ten- 
derly invoked the spirit of charity and freedom from 
malice toward the enemy, had touched the note of 
lyric poetry, it also spoke the note of leadership. It 
was unmistakable in purpose and perseverance. The 
victory must be won. Time w^as nothing; the Union 
everything. His unswerving purpose to fight the 
issue out, as expressed with rare humanity in the 
closing days of his career, was but the re-affirmation 
of w^hat he had said the previous year in Philadel- 
phia : 

We accepted this war for an object, and the war will 
end when that object is attained. Under God, 1 hope 
it will never end until that time. Speaking of the 
present campaign, General Grant is reported to have 



198 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

said, "I am going through on this Hne if it takes all 
summer." This war has taken three years ; it was 
begun or accepted upon the line of restoring the na- 
tional authority over the whole national domain, and 
for the American people, and as far as my knowledge 
enables me to speak, I say we are going through on 
this line if it takes three years more/ 

There was literary content, also, in Lincoln's crit- 
ical aptitude. His early enthusiasm for reading 
the best in literature lost none of its freshness during 
the Presidency. In some ways it became stronger. 
In that veritable little source-book which the artist, 
F. B. Carpenter, has left us in his Six Mouths at the 
White House, much authentic light is thrown upon 
Lincoln's intellectual tastes and habits. During the 
time in which Mr. Carpenter was engaged in paint- 
ing the Emancipation Proclamation scene, he was 
privileged to have many intimate conversations with 
the President. One of these conversations turned 
on the subject of Shakespeare. It w-as at the 
time when Edwin Booth w^as playing an engage- 

I Lincoln's letter of May 30, 1864, to Dr. Ida and others, in 
response to his receipt from them of "the preamble and reso- 
hitions of the American Baptist Home Mission Society," con- 
tains, besides a remarkably concise statement of his anti-slavery 
philosophy, two of the biblical quotations used ten months later 
in the Second Inaugural. Heartfelt sentiments of charity will 
be found also in Lincoln's two responses to serenades, Novem- 
ber 9 and 10, 1864, after his reelection. 



The Closing Triumph 199 

ment in Washington. Lincoln said : "It matters 
not to me whether Shakespeare be well or ill 
acted; with him the thought suffices. . . . There is 
one passage of the play of 'Hamlet' which is very 
apt to be slurred over by the actor, or omitted alto- 
gether, which seems to me the choicest part of the 
play. It is the soliloquy of the king after the mur- 
der. It always struck me as one of the finest touches 
of nature in the world." Then, says Carpenter, the 
President, throwing himself into the very spirit of 
the scene, repeated from memory the entire passage, 
of nearly forty lines, "with a feeling and apprecia- 
tion unsurpassed by anything I ever witnessed upon 
the stage. Remaining in thought for a few moments, 
he continued : 

"The opening of the play of 'King Richard the 
Third' seems to me often entirely misapprehended. 
It is quite common for an actor to come upon the 
stage, and, in a sophomoric style, to begin with a 
flourish : 

'Now is the winter of our discontent 
Made glorious summer by this sun of York, 
And all the clouds that lowered upon our house. 
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried!' 
Now," said he, "this is all wrong. Richard, you 
remember, had been, and was then, plotting the 



200 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

destruction of his brothers, to make room for him- 
self. Outwardly, the most loyal to the newly- 
crowned king, secretly he could scarcely contain his 
impatience at the obstacles still in the way of his 
own elevation. He appears upon the stage, just 
after the crowning of Edward, burning with re- 
pressed hate and jealousy. The prologue is the 
utterance of the most intense bitterness and satire." 
The President at this moment, says Carpenter, "un- 
consciously assuming the character" of the king, 
"repeated, also from memory, Richard's soliloquy, 
rendering it with a degree of force and power that 
made it seem like a new creation to me. Though 
familiar with the passage from boyhood, I can truly 
say that never till that moment had I fully appreci- 
ated its spirit. I could not refrain from laying down 
my palette and brushes, and applauding heartily, 
upon his conclusion, saying at the same time, half 
in earnest, that I was not sure but that he had made 
a mistake in the choice of a profession, consider- 
ably, as may be imagined, to his amusement. Mr. 
Sinclair has since repeatedly said to me that he never 
heard these choice passages of Shakespeare rendered 
with more effect by the most famous of modern 
actors." ^ 

I See Browne, p. 469. 



1 



The Closing Triumph 201 

A few evenings later, when Mr. Carpenter en- 
tered the President's study, the conversation again 
turned on Shakespeare, and the President read aloud 
several favorite passages from the plays. Leaning 
back in his chair, he said : "There is a poem that has 
been a great favorite with me for years, to which 
my attention was first called when I was a young 
man, by a friend, and which I afterward saw and 
■ cut from a newspaper, and carried in my pocket 
till by frequent reading I had it by heart." Lincoln 
then, half closing his eyes, repeated to Carpenter the 
poem by William Knox, beginning, "Oh ! why should 
the spirit of mortal be proud?" Lincoln spoke also 
of "some quaint, queer verses, written ... by 
Oliver Wendell Holmes, entitled, 'The Last Leaf,' 
one of which is inexpressibly touching." He then 
repeated the following verse : 

The mossy marbles rest 

On the lips that he has pressed 

In their bloom ; 
And the names he loved to hear 
Have been carved for many a year 
On the tomb. 

Commenting on these verses, the President said: 
"For pure pathos, in my judgment, there is nothing 
finer than those six lines in the English language!" 



202 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

Carpenter speaks of Burns as Lincoln's favorite 
poet. He also tells us of his having called the Presi- 
dent's attention to Edwin Forrest's presentation, at 
Ford's Theatre, of Richelieu. When Lincoln, upon 
asking who wrote the play, learned that the author 
was Bulwer Lytton, he rejoined : "Ah ! well, I 
knew Bulwer wrote novels, but I did not know he 
was a play-writer also. It may seem somewhat 
strange to say," he continued, "but I never read an 
entire novel in my life!" When Senator Harris of 
New York, who was present, remarked, "Is it pos- 
sible?" the President said: "Yes, it is a fact. I 
once commenced 'Ivanhoe,' but never finished it." 
And Carpenter comments : "This statement, in this 
age of the world, seems almost incredible — but I 
give the circumstance as it occurred." Lincoln's 
preference for poetry as against prose literature led 
him to notice the minor as well as the major singers. 
Carpenter reports that the poet Nathaniel Parker 
Willis once told him of riding, on a certain occasion, 
with the President and Mrs. Lincoln, when the 
former referred to his poem "Parrhasius" and 
quoted several lines from it. 

Another instance of Lincoln's devotion to Shake- 
speare appears in the artist's book. "In the spring 
of 1862, the President spent several days at Fortress 



The Closing Triumph 203 

Monroe. . . . His favorite diversion was reading 
Shakespeare. One day ... as he sat reading alone, 
he called to his aide in an adjoining room : 'You 
have been writing long enough, Colonel ; come in 
here; I want to read you a passage in Hamlet.' He 
read the discussion on ambition between Hamlet 
and his courtiers, and the soliloquy on the nature of 
the future state. This was followed by a passage 
from Macbeth. Then opening to King John, he 
read from the third act the passage in which Con- 
stance bewails her imprisoned, lost boy." Lincoln 
then closed the book and repeated the words : 

And, father cardinal, I have heard you say 

That we shall see and know our friends in heaven: 

If that be true, I shall see my boy again. 

Addressing his aide, he said : "Colonel, did you ever 
dream of a lost friend, and feel that you were hold- 
ing sweet communion with that friend, and yet have 
a sad consciousness that it was not a reality? — just 
so I dream of my boy Willie." Then, overcome 
with emotion, "he dropped his head on the table, and 
sobbed aloud." 

In a delightfully written essay of personal remi- 
niscence on Life in the White House, John Hay 
speaks of Lincoln's fondness for Shakespeare, and 



204 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

mentions especially Hamlet. Macbeth, and the his- 
torical plays, of which Richard II was his favorite. 
Mr. Hay is authority for the statement that Lincoln 
read Shakespeare more than all other authors to- 
gether; that he was also fond of Hood and Burns, 
and read Bryant, \\1iittier, and Holmes; that the 
President was a light sleeper, and would sometimes 
go to bed with a volume of Hood in his hands — - 
would even rise at midnight and visit his secretary's 
room to read aloud something that especially pleased 
him. Lincoln liked to read aloud, and would often 
do so for hours with a single secretary for his audi- 
ence. He liked to witness a Shakespearean per- 
formance at the -theater, and particularly delighted 
in the character of Falstaff as presented by Hackett. 
Li a letter of acknowledgment to Hackett, August 
17, 1863, Lincoln wrote: 

AIv DEAR Sir: Months ago I should have acknowl- 
edged the receipt of your book and accompanying kind 
note ; and I now have to beg your pardon for not having 
done so. 

For one of my age, I have seen very little of the 
drama. The first presentation of Falstaff I ever saw 
was yours here, last winter or spring. Perhaps the 
best compliment I can pay. is to say, as I truly can, 1 
am very anxious to see it arain. Some of Shake- 



The Closing Triumph 205 

speare's plays T have never read ; while others I have 
gone over perhaps as frequently as any unprofes- 
sional reader. Among the latter are Lear, Richard 
III. Henry VIII, Hamlet, and especially Macbeth. I 
tliink nothing equals Macbeth. It is wonderful. 

Unlike you gentlemen of the profession, I think the 
soliloquy in Hamlet commencing "Oh, my offense is 
rank," surpasses that commencing "To be or not to be." 
But pardon this small attempt at criticism. I should 
like to hear you pronounce the opening speech of 
Richard III. Will you not soon visit Washington 
again? If you do so, please call and let me make your 
personal acquaintance. Yours truly, 

A. Lincoln. 

Other personal testimony of those who were well 
acquainted with Lincoln's reading tastes, while he 
was President, is available. Noah Brooks tells us 
that Lincoln was a lover of many philosophical 
books, and particularly liked Butler's Analogy of 
Religion and John Stuart Mill's essay on Liberty; 
that he had always hoped to get at Edw^ards' volume 
on the Will. Brooks mentions certain poems of 
Hood that were favorites : "Aliss Kilmansegg and 
Her Golden Leg," "Faithless Sally Brown." Of 
Holmes, he mentions "September Gale," "The Last 
Leaf," "The Chambered Nautilus," and "Ballad of 
an Oysterman." Longfellow's "Psalm of Life" 



206 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

and "Birds of Ivillingworth" are also mentioned. 
Lowell was known to Lincoln bv his "Biglow 
Papers," at least. ^ 

Probably no more interesting bit of personal ob- 
servation of Lincoln's reading appetite has been 
recorded than that by General F. L. \^iele, who ac- 
companied the President and Secretaries Stanton 
and Chase on a visit to Fortress Monroe for "obser- 
vation of affairs in that region." The general 
reports that it was "a most interesting study to see 
these men relieved for the moment from the sur- 
roundings of their onerous official duties." Speak- 
ing especially of Lincoln, General Viele says: "He 
would sit for hours during the trip, repeating the 
finest passages of Shakespeare's best plays, page 
after page of Browning, and whole cantos of Byron.- 
He was as familiar with bcllcs-lcttrcs as many men 
who make much more pretension to culture. His 
inexhaustible stock of anecdotes gave to superficial 
minds the impression that he was not a thoughtful 
and reflecting man, whereas the fact was directly 
the reverse. The anecdotes formed no more part 
of Mr. Lincoln's mind than a smile forms a part of 
the face." 

1 Harper's Magazine, xx.xl :220 ff. 

2 This is the only reference to Browning in Lincohi's read- 
ing that we have. The testimony as to Byron is ample. 



The Closing Triumph 207 

Few men have ever created a greater variety of 
impressions upon others than Abraham Lincoln; 
probably no other man was ever the subject of so 
great a diversity of criticism, good and bad. South- 
ern critics were naturally the most caustic. At the 
beginning of the war, some of these spoke of him 
as "a drunken, brawling boor," addicted to tobacco 
and profanity. There were those who regarded him 
as coarse and ill at ease in the presence of others. 
His jocularity did not always fall gracefully upon 
the sensitive ears of polished diplomats from abroad ; 
even the "finely-tempered mind" of our own Haw- 
thorne, as Colonel Hay tells us, could not become 
enthusiastic over him, and it took close intimacy to 
bring Seward and Chase to recognize his virtues. 
Bates, his Attorney-General, with tastes for art and 
poetry, told Carpenter one day that he thought 
genius and talent were rarely combined in one indi- 
vidual. Asked by the painter to give his distinction. 
Bates replied: "Genius conceives; talent executes." 
Referring to the President, the cabinet officer said: 
"Air. Lincoln comes very near being a perfect man, 
according to my ideal of manhood. He lacks but 
one thing. ... His deficiency is in the element of 
zvill. . . . Why, if a man comes to him with a touch- 
ing story, his judgment is almost certain to be 



208 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

affected by it. Shuukl the applicant be a icoiiian, a 
wife, a mother, a sister, — in nine cases out of ten, 
her tears, if nothing else, are sure to prevail." Par- 
tisans of McClellan referred to the President as the 
"Nero who cracked jokes while Rome was burning." 
On the contrary, Lincoln referred to ]\IcClellan, who 
was a social favorite in Washington and much lion- 
ized in drawing-rooms, as a "pleasant and scholarly" 
gentleman, and put his kindly estimate of the general 
into a line of poetry by saying that, 

"Even his failings lean to virtue's side."^ 

Intellectually, there was a great difference between 
Lincoln and his general. This is strikingly discover- 
able in the latter's own field as head of the Army of 
the Potomac, as a reader of the correspondence 
between them cannot but conclude. This difference 
appears with special impressiveness in Lincoln's 
letter to the general of October 13, 1862, interpret- 
ing the respective advantages of McClellan and Lee 
by means of the mathematical symbol of arc and 
chord of a circle. Even in military affairs, Lincoln's 
natural sagacity has left us some sparks of his fine 
critical faculty. 

I The line is quoted from Carpenter, p. 227 ; it is from Gold- 
smith's Deserted Village, line 164, and reads : "And even his 
failings lean'd to virtue's side." 



The Closing Triumph ^ 209 

This aspect of Lincohi's mind has been beauti- 
fully and luminously indicated by a certain French 
estimate of him. In his personal recollections of 
Lincoln, the outgrowth of a visit to this country 
early in 1865, the Marquis de Chambrun, friend of 
De Tocqueville, wrote that Lincoln's personal ap- 
pearance "denoted a remarkable intelligence, great 
strength of penetration, tenacity of will, and ele- 
vated instincts. ... I have heard him give his opin- 
ion on statesmen, argue political problems, always 
with astounding precision and justness. I have 
heard him speak of a woman who was considered 
beautiful, discuss the particular character of her ap- 
pearance, distinguish what was praiseworthy from 
what was open to criticism, all with the sagacity of 
an artist. Lately two letters in which he speaks of 
Shakespeare, and in particular of Macbeth, have 
been published; his judgment evinces that sort of 
delicacy and soundness of taste that would honor a 
great literary critic."^ 

As an example of practical wisdom, Lincoln prob- 
ably never wrote anything that surpassed his Last 
Public Speech, on the evening of April 11, 1865, 
two days after Lee's surrender to Grant, and three 
days before he was assassinated. The Gettysburg 

I Scriliner's Monthly, xvi :8i3 f. 



210 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

Address was his highest utterance combining the 
intellectual and intuitional elements of his imagi- 
nation. The Second Inaugural is the high water- 
mark of his poetic temper and intelligence. But 
this Last Public Speech must have an enduring- 
place in the literature of practical political wisdom.^ 
This speech was written out and presented to a vast 
crowd of citizens in Washington who had gathered 
on that evening at the \A'hite House to rejoice with 
the President over the close of the long, dreary war, 
and to hear what he had to say. The crowd had 
come to him the day before, but he told the people 
that if they would come the next evening, he would 
have something to say. It was an occasion on which 
he was anxious to speak with exactness and conci- 
sion on the next great step before the nation. That 
was the subject of reconstruction. He stripped the 
question of its abstract implications. It mattered 
little to him whether the erring States had been, 
theoretically, out of the Union or not. The imme- 
diate question was their proper and unembarrassed 
return, that they might, with the whole country, 
recover from their crippled condition, and unite with 
all to restore the strength and future happiness of 
the Union. This had been his procedure in the case 
I Page 282, Appendix. 



The Closing Triumph 211 

of Louisiana. With concessions in matters of detail, 
he saw no reason why such a generous policy should 
not be equally applicable to the other "Confederate 
States." 

George Bancroft, the historian, struck the correct 
note of Lincoln's attitude when he said : "It was 
the nature of Lincoln to forgive. When hostilities 
ceased, he who had always sent forth the flag with 
every one of its stars in the field was eager to receive 
back his returning countrymen." 

Lincoln's life of only fifty-six years was spent in 
exemplary preparation and service. The early con- 
ditions of his career called for heroic exertion and 
independence if it was to count for much. They 
left their impress upon his language, his bearing, 
his sympathy, and his imagination. He retained the 
"spHt-infinitive," and that frontier jocularity which 
was sometimes too realistic for the sensitive nerves 
of the more highly cultivated. He was as fun-loving 
and as human in his sensibilities as he was ambitious 
and reflective. Like Paracelsus, he had a native 
thirst for knowledge. He delighted in conversation 
and lent himself readily to the training that was to 
be found in public address. In these respects he was 
like his great political rival, but he was beyond that 
rival in the gift of fancy and his life-long passion 



212 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

for reading and writing. He shaped his culture by 
the scholar's practice of conserving his time and by 
industrious quarrying in important fields of knowl- 
edge. His method he indicated in his advice to a 
law student : "It is only to get books and read and 
study them carefully. . . . Work, work, work is the 
main thing."^ What he lacked in personal polish 
and comeliness was more than balanced by his power 
to reason clearly and in his appreciation of what was 
just and beautiful. He saw the prevailing issue of 
his time, and fitted himself to lead public opinion in 
the courage and processes of its solution. He be- 
lieved the best government to be wliere the majority 
intelligence and will were made the sovereign spe- 
cific for social and political ills. Slavery and democ- 
racy gave him the theme out of which grew his skill 
in debate and his far-seeing public policy. The 
Bible, the law, and poetry furnished him the means 
of education and steadfastness in the conduct of 
that policy. His splendid union of common-sense 
and idealism gave substance and finality to those 
masterpieces of pure English diction which the world 
will always treasure, and which, with the passing 
of time, give more and more validity to his position 
as a man of letters. 

I Sec letter to J. M. Brockman. page 303, Appendix. 



The Closing Triumph 213 

The mind and work of Lincoln were not confined 
to a single age. He regarded his problem as signifi- 
cant for all times. He believed that the salvation 
of the Union was vitally concerned with the con- 
tinuation of "free government upon the earth." Re- 
peatedly he interpreted the Civil War struggle from 
this point of view. How forward w-as his look and 
his wisdom is more than ever apparent to us to-day. 
We now realize as never before, that but for the 
principles he held fast as a means of cementing the 
States of the Union together, under the aegis of one 
flag and one national spirit, the cause of govern- 
ment responsible to the people might have, for a 
time at least, "perished from the earth." It 
was necessary for united America to throw its 
power into the scales of a world war to prevent the 
force of absolutism from again becoming the domi- 
nant regime in Europe. In these days it has become 
increasingly clear to us that the power of America 
has been indispensable to preserve what Lincoln 
called the inestimable jewel of liberty, not only in 
Europe, where it has made substantial progress, but 
from jeopardy in our part of the world as well. 
The wonderful growth of our national strength and 
faith in freedom since the Civil War gives real 
potency to President Wilson's fine phrase, "The 



214 Lincoln as a Man of Letters 

world must be made safe for democracy." The 
world is discovering this as the genuine American 
spirit, made secure and prophetic by the remarkable 
personality and insight of Lincoln. This, chiefly, 
let us say, gives soul and permanence to the literature 
he has left us. 



APPENDIX 

Selections from Lincoln's Works 



SELECTIONS FROM LINCOLN'S WORKS 

Introduction 

The following selections from Lincoln's works 
are .based on the well known edition of Lincoln's 
Complete Works, by Nicolay and Hay. Permission 
to reproduce these selections here has been kindly 
granted by The Century Company. As a matter of 
fact, there is as yet no complete edition of Lincoln's 
writings, although the Nicolay and Hay edition is 
so far complete that it is still the most important 
resource for students of the great war President. 
New Lincoln materials appear from time to time. 
Miss Tarbell's first edition of her "Life of Abraham 
Lincoln" added nearly two hundred pages of unpub- 
lished letters, etc. More recently, Gilbert A. Tracy's 
"Uncollected Letters of Abraham Lincoln" brought 
upwards of three hundred and fifty more Lincoln 
letters together for the first time. Other letters yet 
unpublished are known to exist, and it is believed 
that time will reveal still others written by Lincoln. 

The selections which follow are not inclusive of 
all that Lincoln wrote of literary value. At least 

217 



Appendix 

the writer of this volume would not convey such 
an impression. But they are representative of Lin- 
coln as a man of letters, and undoubtedly include 
his finest work. They include not only those writ- 
ings which illustrate the man and his mind, but 
those which have especial significance for our own 
time and value for the time to come. 



ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS 

Lincoln's Early Political Ambition 

In 1832, after serving as captain in the Black Hawk war, 
in a "bloodless campaign," Lincoln returned to New Salem and 
became a candidate for the Illinois legislature. He issued 
the following address to the voters of Sangamon county. 
It contains his views on the issues of the time— internal im- 
provements, public education, and the regulation of state 
finance. He was now entering his twenty-third year, and had 
come from Indiana but two years before. His development 
in style and in knowledge of public affairs had been rapid. 
His youth was probably the chief cause of hi3 defeat, although 
of the two hundred and eighty-four votes cast in his home 
precinct of New Salem he received all but seven. 

Fellow Citizens : Having become a candidate for 
the honorable office of one of your Representatives in 
the next General Assembly of this state, in accordance 
with an established custom and the principles of true 
republicanism, it becomes my duty to make known to 
you, the people whom I propose to represent, my sen- 
timents with regard to local affairs. 

Time and experience have verified to a demonstra- 
tion the public utility of internal improvements. That 
the poorest and most thinly populated countries would 
be greatly benefited by the opening of good roads, and 
in the clearing of navigable streams within their limits, 
is what no person will deny. Yet it is folly to under- 
take works of this or any other kind without first 
knowing that we are able to finish them — as half -fin- 
ished work generally proves to be labor lost. There 
cannot justly be any objection to having railroads and 
canals, any more than to other good things, provided 
they cost nothing. The only objection is to paying 

219 



220 Appendix 

for them ; and the objection arises from want of ability 
to pay. . . . 

(Then follow six paragraphs in which Lincoln argues 
that although railroad communication would be the more 
reliable and useful, the estimated cost of the proposed 
line between "some eligible point on the Illinois river," 
via Jacksonville, to Springfield, namely, $290,000, made 
the improvement of the Sangamon River "an object 
much better suited to our infant resources.") 

It appears that the practice of loaning money at ex- 
orbitant rates of interest has already been opened as a 
field for discussion ; so I suppose I may enter upon it 
without claiming the honor, or risking the danger, 
which may await its first explorer. It seems as though 
we are never to have an end to this baneful and cor- 
roding system, acting almost as prejudicially to the 
general interests of the community as a direct tax of 
several thousand dollars annually laid on each county 
for the benefit of a few individuals only, unless there 
be a law made fixing the limits of usury. A law for 
this purpose. I am of opinion, may be made without 
materially injuring any class of people. In cases of 
extreme necessity, there could always be means found 
to cheat the law ; while in all other cases it would have 
its intended effect. I would favor the passage of a law 
on this subject which might not be very easily evaded. 
Let it be such tliat the labor and difficulty of evading 
it could only be justified in cases of greatest necessity. 

Upon the subject of education, not presuming to dic- 
tate any plan or system respecting it, I can only say 
that I view it as the most important subject which we, 
as a people, can be engaged in. That every man may 
receive at least a moderate education, and thereby be 
enabled to read the histories of his own and other 
countries, by which he may duly appreciate the value 
of our free institutions, appears to be an object of 
vital importance, even on this account alone, to say 
nothing of the advantages and satisfaction to be de- 



Addresses and State Papers 221 

rived from all being able to read the Scriptures, and 
other works both of a religious and moral nature, for 
themselves. 

For my part, I desire to see the time when educa- 
tion — and by its means, morality, sobriety, enterprise, 
and industry — shall become much more general than 
at present, and should be gratified to have it in my 
power to contribute something to the advancement of 
any measure which might have a tendency to accelerate 
that happy period. 

With regard to existing laws, some alterations are 
thought to be necessary. Many respectable men have 
suggested that our estray laws, the law respecting the 
issuing of executions, the road law, and some others, 
are deficient in their present form, and require alter- 
ations. But considering the great probability that the 
framers of those laws were wiser than myself, 1 should 
prefer not meddling with them, unless they were first 
attacked by others ; in which case I should feel it both 
a privilege and a duty to take that stand which, in my 
view, might tend most to the advancement of justice. 

But, fellow citizens, I shall conclude. Considering 
the great degree of modesty which should always at- 
tend youth, it is probable I have already been more 
presuming than becomes me. However, upon the sub- 
jects of which I have treated, I have spoken as I have 
thought. I may be wrong in regard to any or all of 
them ; but, holding it a sound maxim that it is better 
only sometimes to be right than at all times to be 
wrong, so soon as I discover my opinions to be erro- 
neous I shall be ready to renounce them. 

Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. 
Whether it be true or not, I can say, for one, chat I 
have no other so great as that of being truly esteenied 
of my fellow men by rendering myself worthy of their 
esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this 
ambition is yet to be developed. I am young and 
unknown to many of you. I was born and have ever 
remained in the most humble walks of life. I have 



222 Appendix 

no wealthy or popular relations or friends to recom- 
mend me. My case is thrown exclusively upon the 
independent voters of the country, and if elected, they 
will have conferred a favor upon me for which I shall 
be unremitting in my labors to compensate. But if 
the good people in their wisdom shall see fit to keep 
me in the background, I have been too familiar with 
disappointments to be very much chagrined. 

Your friend and fellow citizen, 

A. Lincoln. 

From the Peoria Speech. October i6, 1854 

This speech will be found in Nicolay and Hay. It con- 
tains more quotations than any other speech Lincoln made. 
The larger share of these, as usual with him, were from the 
Bible. Outside of the Bible, Lincoln was accustomed to quote 
most freely from Shakespeare. This speech was his step- 
ping-stone to the Presidency. 

I particularly object to the new position which the 
avowed principle of this Nebraska law gives to slavery 
in the body politic. I object to it because it assumes 
that there can be moral right in the enslaving of one 
man by another. I object to it as a dangerous dal- 
liance for free people — a sad evidence that, feeling, 
over-prosperity, we forget right ; that liberty as a prin- 
ciple we have ceased to revere. I object to it because 
the Fathers of the Republic eschewed and rejected it. 
The argument of "necessity" was the only argument 
they ever admitted in favour of slavery, and so far, 
and so far only as it carried them, did they ever go. 
They found the institution existing among us, which 
they could not help, and they cast the blame on the 
British king for having permitted its introduction. 
Thus we see the plain, immistakable spirit of their age 
towards slavery was hostility to the principle, and 
toleration only by necessity. 

But now it is to be transformed into a sacred right. 
. . . Henceforth it is to be the chief jewel of the 
nation — the very figure-head of the ship of State. 



Addresses and State Papers 223 

Little by little, but steadily as man's march to the grave, 
we have been giving up the old for the new faith. 
Near eighty years ago we began by declaring that all 
men are created equal ; but now from that beginning 
we have run down to the other declaration, that for 
some men to enslave others is a sacred right of self- 
government. These principles cannot stand together. 
They are as opposite as God and Mammon ; and who- 
ever holds to the one must despise the other. . . . 

Our Republican robe is soiled and trailed in the dust. 
Let us purify it. Let us turn and wash it white in the 
spirit if not the blood of the Revolution. Let us turn 
slavery from its claims of moral right, back upon its 
existing legal rights and its arguments of necessity. 
Let us return it to the position our fathers gave it, 
and there let it rest in peace. Let us re-adopt the 
Declaration of Independence, and with it the practices 
and policy which harmonize with it. Let North and 
South, let all Americans, let all lovers of liberty every- 
where, join in the great and good work. If we do 
this, we shall not only have saved the Union, but we 
shall have so saved it as to make and to keep it for 
ever worthy of the saving. 

Speech on a House Divided Against Itself. 
June 26, 1858 

Lincoln gave this speech before the Republican State Con- 
vention in Springfield, which named him for United States 
senator against Douglas. It comprehends at the outset Lin- 
coln's philosophic grasp of the slavery question as it pre- 
sented itself at that time in America. It contains a clear his- 
tory of the events leading to tlie Kansas-Nebraska legisla- 
tion sponsored by Douglas, with an analysis of its meaning. 
The effective figure connecting Stephen A. Douglas. Franklin 
Pierce, Roger B. Taney, and James Buchanan with the con- 
struction of the pro-slavery policy implied in the Douglas pro- 
gramme was a challenge Douglas was compelled to answer. 
It was Lincoln's method of making the historical drift of 
slavery-extension clear to the public mind. It is interesting 
to compare the close of this speech with that of the Cooper 
Institute Address, two vears later. 



224 Appendix 

If we could first know where we are, and whither 
we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and 
how to do it. We are now far into the fifth year since 
a policy was initiated with the avowed object and con- 
fident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation. 
Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has 
not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. 
In my opinion it will not cease until a crisis shall have 
been reached and passed. "A house divided against 
itself cannot stand." I believe this government can- 
not endure permanently, half slave and half free. I do 
not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect 
the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be 
divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. 
Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further 
spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall 
rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate 
extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till 
it shall become alike lawful in all the states, old as 
well as new, North as well as South. 

Have we no tendency to the latter condition? Let 
any one who doubts, carefully contemplate that now 
almost complete legal combination — piece of machin- 
ery, so to speak — compounded of the Nebraska doctrine 
and the Dred Scott decision. Let him consider not only 
what work the machinery is adapted to do, and how 
well adapted ; but also let him study the history of 
its construction, and trace, if he can, or rather fail, if 
he can, to trace the evidences of design and concert 
of action among its chief architects from the beginning. 

The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from 
more than half the states by state constitutions, and 
from most of the national territory by congressional 
prohibition. Four days later commenced the struggle 
which ended in repealing that congressional prohibi- 
tion. This opened all the national territory to slavery. 
and was the first point gained. 

But so far, Congress only had acted ; and an indorse- 
ment by the people, real or apparent, was indispensable 



Addresses and State Papers 225 

to save the point already gained and give chance for 
more. 

This necessity had not been overlooked, but had 
been provided for, as well as might be, in the notable 
argument of Squatter Sovereignty, otherwise called 
sacred right of self-government, which latter phrase, 
though expressive of the only rightful basis of any 
government, was so perverted in this attempted use 
of. it, as to amount to just this : That if any one man 
choose to enslave another, no third man shall be al- 
lowed to object. That argument was incorporated into 
the Nebraska bill itself, in the language which follows : 
"It being the true intent and meaning of this act, not 
to legislate slavery into any territory or state, nor to 
exclude it therefrom ; but to leave the people thereof 
perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic 
institutions in their own way, subject only to the Con- 
stitution of the United States." Then opened the roar 
of loose declamation in favor of Squatter Sovereignty 
and sacred right of sclf-govcrnmcyit. "But," said op- 
position members, "let us amend the bill so as to 
expressly declare that the people of the territory may 
exclude slavery." "Not we," said the friends of the 
measure, and down they voted the amendment. 

While the Nebraska bill was passing through Con- 
gress, a law case, involving the question of a negro's 
freedom, by reason of his owner having voluntarily 
taken him first into a free state and then into a terri- 
tory covered by the congressional prohibition, and 
held him as a slave for a long time in each, was passing 
through the United States Circuit Court for the Dis- 
trict of Missouri ; and both Nebraska bill and lawsuit 
were brought to a' decision, in the same month of May, 
1854. The negro's name was Dred Scott, which name 
now designates the decision finally made in the case. 
Before the then next presidential election, the law 
case came to, and was argued in, the Supreme Court 
of the United States ; but the decision of it was de- 
ferred until after the election. Still, before the elec- 



226 Appendix 

tion, Senator Trumbull, on the floor of the Senate, 
requested the leading advocate of the Nebraska bill 
to state his opinion whether the people of a territory 
can constitutionally exclude slavery from their limits, 
and the latter answers : "That is a question for the 
Supreme Court." 

The election came. Mr. Buchanan was elected, and 
the indorsement, such as it was, secured. That was 
the second point gained. The indorsement, however, 
fell short of a clear popular majority by nearly four 
hundred thousand votes, and so, perhaps, was not over- 
whelmingly reliable and satisfactory. The outgoing 
President, in his last annual message, as impressively 
as possible echoed back upon the people the weight and 
authority of the indorsement. The Supreme Court met 
again ; did not announce their decision, but ordered 
a reargument. The presidential inauguration came, 
and still no decision of the Court ; but the incoming 
President in his inaugural address fervently exhorted 
the people to abide by the forthcoming decision, what- 
ever it might be. Then, in a few days, came the 
decision. 

The reputed author of the Nebraska bill finds an 
early occasion to make a speech at this capital, in- 
dorsing the Dred Scott decision, and vehemently de- 
nouncing all opposition to it. The new President, too, 
seizes the early occasion of the Silliman letter to 
indorse and strongly construe that decision, and to 
express his astonishment that any different view had 
ever been entertained ! 

At length a squabble springs up between the Presi- 
dent and the author of the Nebraska bill, on the mere 
question of fact whether the Lecompton constitution 
was, or was not, in any just sense, made by the people 
of Kansas; and in that quarrel, the latter declares 
that all he wants is a fair vote for the people, and 
that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or 
voted up. I do not understand his declaration that he 
cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted 



Addresses and State Papers 227 

up, to be intended by him other than as an apt defi- 
nition of the policy he would impress upon the public 
mind — the principle for which he declares he has 
sufifered so much, and is ready to suffer to the end. 
And well may he cling to that principle. If he has 
any parental feeling, well may he cling to it. That 
principle is the only shred left of his original Nebraska 
doctrine. Under the Dred Scott decision, "squatter 
sovereignty" squatted out of existence, tumbled down 
like temporary scaffolding — like the mold at the foun- 
dry, served through one blast, and fell back into loose 
sand — helped to carry an election, and then was kicked 
to the winds. His late joint struggle with the Repub- 
licans against the Lecompton constitution, involves 
nothing of the original Nebraska doctrine. That strug- 
gle was made on a point — the right of the people 
to make their own constitution — upon which he and 
the Republicans have never differed. 

The several points of the Dred Scott decision in con- 
nection with Senator Douglas's "care not" policy, con- 
stitute the piece of machinery in its present state of 
advancement. This was the third point gained. The 
working points of that machinery are : 

First. That no negro slave, imported as such from 
Africa, and no descendant of such slave, can ever 
be a citizen of any state, in the sense of that term as 
used in the Constitution of the United States. This 
point is made in order to deprive the negro, in every 
possible event, of the benefit of that provision of the 
United States Constitution which declares that "citi- 
zens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges 
and immunities of citizens in the several States." 

Secondly. That "subject to the Constitution of the 
United States," neither Congress nor a territorial 
legislature can exclude slavery from any United States 
territory. This point is made in order that individual 
men may fill up the territories with slaves, without 
danger of losing them as property, and thus enhance 



228 Appendix 

the chances of permanency to the institution through 
all the future. 

Thirdly. That whether the holding a negro in actual 
slavery in a free state makes him free as against the 
holder, the United States Courts will not decide, but 
will leave to be decided by the courts of any slave state 
the negro may be forced into by the master. This 
point is made, not to be pressed immediately, but if 
acquie,sced in for a while, and apparently indorsed by 
the people at an election, then to sustain the logical 
conclusion that what Dred Scott's master might lav/- 
fully do with Dred Scott in the free state of Illinois, 
every other master may lawfully do, with any other 
one, or one thousand slaves in Illinois, or in any other 
free state. 

Auxiliary to all this, and working hand in hand with 
it, the Nebraska doctrine, or what is left of it, is to 
educate and mold public opinion, at least Northern 
public opinion, not to care whether slavery is voted 
down or voted up. This shows exactly where we now 
are, and partially, also, whither we are tending. 

It will throw additional light on the latter to go 
back and run the mind over the string of historical 
facts already stated. Several things will now appear 
less dark and mysterious than they did when they Vv-ere 
transpiring. The people were to be left "perfectly 
free," "subject only to the Constitution." What the 
Constitution had to do with it outsiders could not then 
see. Plainly enough now, it was an exactly fitted niche 
for the Dred Scott decision to afterward come in, and 
declare the perfect freedom of the people to be just 
no freedom at all. Why was the amendment expressly 
declaring the right of the people voted down? Plainly 
enough now, the adoption of it would have spoiled the 
niche for the Dred Scott decision. Why was the Court 
decision held up? Why even a senator's individual 
opinion withheld till after the presidential election? 
Plainly enough now, the speaking out then would have 
damaged the "perfectly free" argument upon which 



Addresses and State Papers 229 

the election was to be carried. Why the outgoing 
FVesident's f ehcitation on the indorsement ? Why the 
delay of a reargument? Why the incoming President's 
advance exhortation in favor of the decision? These 
things look like the cautious patting and petting of 
a spirited horse, preparatory to mounting him, when 
it is dreaded that he may give the rider a fall. And 
why the hasty after-indorsement of the decision by 
the President and others? 

We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adap- 
tations are the result of preconcert. But when we 
see a lot of framed timbers, different portions of which 
we know have been gotten out at different times and 
places, and by different workmen — Stephen, Franklin. 
Roger, and James, ^ for instance — and we see these 
timbers joined together, and see they exactly make the 
frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortises 
exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions 
of the different pieces exactly adapted to their respec- 
tive places, and not a piece too many or too few, not 
omitting even scaffolding — or if a single piece be lack- 
ing, we see the place in the frame exactly fitted and 
prepared yet to bring such piece in — in such a case, we 
find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and 
Franklin and Roger and James all understood one an- 
other from the beginning, and all worked upon a com- 
mon plan or draft, drawn up before the first blow 
was struck. 

It should not be overlooked that by the Nebraska 
bill the people of a state as well as territory were to 
be left "perfectly free," "subject only to the Constitu- 
tion." Why mention a state? They were legislating 
for territories, and not for or about states. Certainly 
the people of a state are and ought to be subject, to the 
Constitution of the United States ; but why is mention 
of this lugged into this merely territorial law ? W' by 

I Stephen A. Douglas, senator from Illinois ; Franklin 
Pierce, ex-President of the United States ; Roger B. Taney, 
Chief Justice of the United States; and James Buchanan, 
President of the United States. 



230 Appendix 

are the people of a territory and the people of a state 
therein lumped together, and their relation to the Con- 
stitution therein treated as being precisely the same? 
While the opinion of the Court by Chief Justice Taney, 
in the Dred Scott case, and the separate opinions of 
all the concurring judges, expressly declare that the 
Constitution of the United States neither permits Con- 
gress nor a territorial legislature to exclude slavery 
from any United States territory, they all omit to de- 
clare whether or not the same Constitution permits a 
state or the people of a state to exclude it. Possibly 
this is a mere omission ; but who can be quite sure if 
McLean or Curtis had sought to get into the opinion 
a declaration of unlimited power in the people of a 
state to exclude slavery from their limits, just as Chase 
and Mace sought to get such declaration in behalf 
of the people of a territory, into the Nebraska bill — 
I ask, who can be quite sure that it would not have 
been voted down in the one case as it had been in the 
other? The nearest approach to the point of declaring 
the power of a state over slavery is made by Judge 
Nelson. He approaches it more than once, using the 
precise idea, and almost the language too, of the 
Nebraska act. On one occasion his exact language is 
"except in cases where the power is restrained by the 
Constitution of the United States, the law of the state 
is supreme over the subject of slavery within its 
jurisdiction." In what cases the power of the state is 
so restrained by the United States Constitution is left 
an open question, precisely as the same question, as 
to the restraint on the power of the territories, was 
left open in the Nebraska act. Put this and that to- 
gether, and we have another nice little niche, which we 
may. ere long, see filled with another Supreme Court 
decision, declaring that the Constitution of the United 
Stated does not permit a state to exclude slavery from 
its limits. And this may especially be expected if 
the doctrine of "care not whether slavery be voted 
down or voted up" shall gain upon the public mind 



Addresses and State Papers 231 

sufficiently to give promise that such a decision can 
be maintained when made. 

Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks of being 
alike lawful in all the states. Welcome or unwelcome, 
such decision is probably coming, and will soon be 
upon us, unless the power of the present political 
dynasty shall be met and overthrown. We shall lie 
down, pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri 
are on the verge of making their state free, and we 
shall awake to the reality instead, that the Supreme 
Court has made Illinois a slave state. To meet and 
overthrow the power of that dynasty is the work now 
before all those who would prevent that consumma- 
tion. That is what we have to do. How can we best 
do it? 

There are those who denounce us openly to their 
own friends, and yet whisper us softly that Senator 
Douglas is the aptest instrument there is with which to 
effect that object. They wish us to infer all from the 
fact that he now has a little quarrel with the present 
head of the dynasty, and that he has regularly voted 
with us on a single point, upon which he and we have 
never differed. They remind us that he is a great 
man and that the largest of us are very small ones. 
Let this be granted. But "a living dog is better than 
a dead lion." Judge Douglas, if not a dead lion, for 
this work, is at least a caged and toothless one. How 
can he oppose the advances of slavery? He don't care 
anything about it. His avowed mission is impressing 
the "public heart" to care nothing about it. A leading 
Douglas Democratic newspaper thinks Douglas's supe- 
rior talent will be needed to resist the revival of the 
African slave trade. Does Douglas believe an effort to 
revive that trade is approaching? He has not said so. 
Does he really think so? But if it is, how can he resist 
it? For years he has labored to prove it a sacred right 
of white men to take negro slaves into the new ter- 
ritories. Can he possibly show that it is a less sacred 
right to buy them where they can be bought cheapest ? 



232 Appendix 

And unquestionably they can be bought cheaper in 
Africa than in Virginia. He has done all in his power 
to reduce the whole question of slavery to one of a 
mere right of property ; and, as such, how can he op- 
pose the foreign slave trade? How can he refuse 
that trade in that "property" shall be "perfectly free," 
unless he does it as a protection to home production? 
And as the home producers will probably not ask the 
protection, he will be wholly without a ground of 
opposition. 

Senator Douglas holds, we know, that a man may 
rightfully be wiser to-day than he was yesterday — that 
he may rightfully change when he finds himself wrong. 
But can we, for that reason, run ahead, and infer that 
he will make any particular change, of which he him- 
self has given no intimation? Can we safely base our 
action upon any such vague inference? 

Now, as ever, I wish not to misrepresent Judge 
Douglas's position, question his motives, or do aught 
that can be personally offensive to him. Whenever, if 
ever, he and we can come together on principle, so that 
our great cause may have assistance from his great 
ability, I hope to have interposed no adventitious ob- 
stacle. But, clearly, he is not now with us — he does 
not pretend to be — he does not promise ever to be. ■ 

Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted 
by, its own undoubted friends — those whose hands are 
free, whose hearts are in the work, who do care for 
the result. Two years ago the Republicans of the 
nation mustered over thirteen hundred thousand 
strong. We did this under the single impulse of re- 
sistance to a common danger, with every external cir- 
cumstance against us. Of strange, discordant, and 
even hostile elements, we gathered from the four 
winds, and formed and fought the battle through, 
under the constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud, 
and pampered enemy. Did we brave all then to falter 
now ? — now, when that same enemy is wavering, dis- 
severed, and belligerent? The result is not doubtful. 



Addresses and State Papers 233 

We shall not fail — if we stand firm, we shall not fail. 
Wise counsels may accelerate or mistakes delay it, 
but sooner or later the victory is sure to come. 



Cooper Institute Address. February 2'], i860 

Greeley, whose sympathies had been with the aspirations 
of Douglas in the great debate, wrote thus of Lincohi's re- 
ception in New York on the occasion of this address : "No 
man has been welcomed by such an audience of the intel- 
lect and mental culture of our city, since the days of Clay 
and Webster." Arnold, in his life of Lincoln, gives this 
estimate of the address : "There is compressed into it such 
an amount of historical learning, stated in the simplest lan- 
guage, as within such a scope, is perhaps unparalleled." 

Mr. President and Fellow Citizens of New 
York : The facts with which I shall deal this evening 
are mainly old and familiar ; nor is there anything new 
in the general use I shall make of them. If there shall 
be any novelty, it will be in the mode of presenting the 
facts, and the inferences and observations following 
that presentation. In his speech last auttmm at Colum- 
bus, Ohio, as reported in the Nciv York Times, Sen- 
ator Douglas said : 

Our fathers, when they framed the government under which 
we live, understood this question just as well, and even bet- 
ter, than we do now. 

I fully indorse this, and I adopt it as a text for this 
discourse. I so adopt it because it furnishes a precise 
and an agreed starting point for a discussion between 
Republicans and that wing of the Democracy headed 
by Senator Douglas. It simply leaves the inquiry : 
What was the understanding those fathers had of the 
question mentioned? 

What is the frame of government vmder which we 
live? The answer must be, "The Constitution of the 
United States." That Constitution consists of the 
original, framed in 1787, and under which the present 
government first went into operation, and twelve sub- 



234 Appendix 

sequently framed amendments, the first ten of which 
were framed in 1789. 

Who were our fathers that framed the Constitution? 
I suppose the "thirty-nine" who signed the original 
instrument may be fairly called our fathers who framed 
that part of the present government. It is almost ex- 
actly true to say they framed it, and it is altogether 
true to say they fairly represented the opinion and 
sentiment of the whole nation at that time. Their 
names, being familiar to nearly all, and accessible to 
quite all, need not now be repeated. 

I take these "thirty-nine," for the present, as being 
"our fathers who framed the government under which 
we live." What is the question which, according to 
the text, those fathers understood "just as well, and 
even better, than we do now ?" 

It is this : Does the proper division of local from 
federal authority, or anything in the Constitution, for- 
bid our federal government to control as to slavery in 
our federal territories ? 

Upon this. Senator Douglas holds the affirmative, 
and Republicans the negative. This affirmation and 
denial form an issue ; and this issue — this question — is 
precisely what the text declares our fathers understood 
"better than we." Let us now inquire whether the 
"thirty-nine," or any of them, ever acted upon this 
question ; and if they did, how they acted upon it— how 
they expressed that better understanding. In 1784, 
three years before the Constitution, the United States 
then owning the Northwestern Territory, and no other, 
the Congress of the Confederation had before them 
the question of prohibiting slavery in that territory ; 
and four of the "thirty-nine" who afterward framed 
the Constitution were in that Congress and voted on 
that question. Of these, Roger Sherman, Thomas 
Mifflin, and Hugh Williamson voted for the prohibi- 
tion, thus showing that, in their understanding, no line 
dividing local from federal authority, nor anything 
else, properly forbade the federal government to con- 



Addresses and State Papers 235 

trol as to slavery in federal territory. The other of the 
four, James McHenry, voted asj^ainst the prohibition, 
showing that for some cause he thought it improper to 
vote for it. 

In 1787, still before the Constitution, but while the 
convention was in session framing it, and while the 
Northwestern Territory still was the only territory 
owned by the United States, the same question of pro- 
hibiting slavery in the territory again came before the 
Congress of the Confederation ; and two more of the 
"thirty-nine" who afterward signed the Constitution 
were in that Congress, and voted on the question. They 
were William Blount and William Few ; and they both 
voted for the prohibition — thus showing that in their 
understanding no line dividing local from federal au- 
thority, nor anything else, properly forbade the federal 
government to control as to slavery in federal territory. 
This time the prohibition became a law, being part of 
what is now well known as the ordinance of '87. 

The question of federal control of slavery in the 
territories seems not to have been directly before the 
convention which framed the original Constitution ; 
and hence it is not recorded that the "thirty-nine," or 
any of them, while engaged on that instrument, ex- 
pressed any opinion on that precise question. 

In 1789, by the first Congress which sat under the 
Constitution, an act was passed to enforce the ordi- 
nance of '^y, including the prohibition of slavery in 
the Northwestern Territory. The bill for this act was 
reported by one of the "thirty-nine" — Thomas Fitz- 
simmons, then a member of the House of Representa- 
tives from Pennsylvania. It went through all its stages 
without a word of opposition, and finally passed both 
branches without ayes and nays, which is equivalent 
to a unanimous passage. In this Congress there were 
sixteen of the thirty-nine fathers who framed the orig- 
inal Constitution. They were John Langdon, Nicholas 
Oilman, Wm. S. Johnson, Roger Sherman, Robert 
Morris, Thos. Fitzsimmons, William Few, Abraham 



236 Appendix 

Baldwin, Rufus King, William Paterson, George Cly- 
mer, Richard Bassett, George Read, Pierce Butler, 
Daniel Carroll, and James Madison. 

This shows that, in their understanding, no line di- 
viding local from federal authority, nor anything m 
the Constitution, properly forbade Congress to prohibit 
slavery in the federal territory ; else both their fidelity 
to correct principle, and their oath to support the Con- 
stitiition, would have constrained them to oppose the 
prohibition. 

Again, George Washington, another of the "thirty- 
nine," was then President of the United States and as 
such approved and signed the bill, thus completing its 
validity as a law, and thus showing that, in his under- 
standing, no line dividing local from federal authority, 
nor anything in the Constitution, forbade the federal 
government to control as to slavery in federal territory. 

No great while after the adoption of the original 
Constitution, North Carolina ceded to the federal gov- 
ernment the country now constituting the state of Ten- 
nessee ; and a few years later Georgia ceded that which 
now constitutes the states of Mississippi and Alabama. 
In both deeds of cession it was made a condition by 
the ceding states that the federal government should 
not prohibit slavery in the ceded country. Besides this, 
slavery was then actually in the ceded country. Under 
these circumstances. Congress, on taking charge of 
these countries, did not absolutely prohibit slavery 
within them. But they did interfere with it — take con- 
trol of it — even there, to a certain extent. In 1798 
Congress organized the territory of Mississippi. In 
the act of organization they prohibited the bringing of 
slaves into the territory from any place without the 
United States, by fine, and giving freedom to slaves so 
bought. This act passed both branches of Congress 
without yeas and nays. In that Congress were three 
of the "thirty-nine" who framed the original Consti- 
tution. They were John Langdon, George Read, and 
Abraham Baldwin. They all probably voted for it. 



Addresses and State Papers 237 

Certainly they would have placed their opposition to it 
upon record if, in their understanding, any line divid- 
ing local from federal authority, or anything in the 
Constitution, properly forbade the federal government 
to control as to slavery in federal territory. 

In 1803 the federal government i)urchased the Loui- 
siana country. Our former territorial acquisitions 
came from certain of our own states ; but this Louisi- 
ana country was acquired from a foreign nation. In 
1804 Congress gave a territorial organization to that 
part of it which now constitutes the state of Louisiana. 
New Orleans, lying within that part, was an old and 
comparatively large city. There were other consider- 
able towns and settlements, and slavery was extensively 
and thoroughly intermingled with the people. Congress 
did not, in the Territorial Act, prohibit slavery ; but 
they did interfere with it — take control of it — in a 
more marked and extensive way than they did in the 
case of Mississippi. The substance of the provision 
therein made in relation to slaves was : 

1st. That no slave should be imported into the ter- 
ritory from foreign parts. 

2d. That no slave should be carried into it who had 
been imported into the United States since the first 
day of May, 1798. 

3d. That no slave should be carried into it, except 
by the owner, and for his own use as a settler ; the 
penalty in all the cases being a fine upon the violator 
of the law, and freedom to the slave. 

This act also was passed without ayes or nays. In 
the Congress which passed it there were two of the 
"thirty-nine." They were Abraham Baldwin and Jona- 
than Dayton. As stated in the case of Mississippi, it 
is probable they both voted for it. They would not 
have allowed it to pass without recording their opposi- 
tion to it if, in their understanding, it violated either 
the line properly dividing local from federal authority, 
or any provision of the Constitution. 

In 1819-1820 came and passed the Missouri question. 



238 Appendix 

Many votes were taken, by yeas and nays, in both 
branches of Congress, upon the various phases of the 
general question. Two of the "thirty-nine" — Rufus 
King and Charles Pinckney — were members of that 
Congress. Mr. King steadily voted for slavery prohi- 
bition and against all compromises, while Mr. Pinckney 
as steadily voted against slavery prohibition and against 
all compromises. By this, Mr. King showed that, in 
his understanding, no line dividing local from federal 
authority, nor anything in the Constitution, was vio- 
lated by Congress prohibiting slavery in federal terri- 
tory ; while Mr. Pinckney, by his votes, showed that, 
in his understanding there was some sufficient reason 
for opposing such prohibition in that case. 

The cases I have mentioned are the only acts of the 
"thirty-nine," or of any of them, upon the direct issue, 
which I have been able to discover. 

To enumerate the persons who thus acted as being 
four in 1784, two in 1787, seventeen in 1789, three in 
1798, two in 1804, and two in 1819-1820, there would 
be thirty of them. But this would be counting John 
Langdon, Roger Sherman, William Few, Rufus King, 
and George Read each twice, and Abraham Baldwin 
three times. The true number of those of the "thirty- 
nine" whom I have shown to have acted upon the 
question which, by the text, they understood better 
than we, is twenty-three, leaving sixteen not shown 
to have acted upon it in any way. 

Here, then, we have twenty-three out of our thirty- 
nine fathers "who framed the government under which 
we live," who have, upon their official responsibility 
and their corporal oaths, acted upon the very question 
which the text affirms they "understood just as well, 
and even better, than we do now" ; and twenty-one of 
them — a clear majority of the whole "thirty-nine" — 
so acting upon it as to make them guilty of gross polit- 
ical impropriety and willful perjury if, in their under- 
standing, any proper division between local and federal 
authority, or anything in the Constitution they had 



Addresses and State Papers 239 

made themselves, and sworn to support, forbade the 
federal government to control as to slavery in the 
federal territories. Thus the twenty-one acted ; and, 
as actions speak louder than words, so actions under 
such res]~)onsibility speak still louder. 

Two of the twenty-three voted against congressional 
prohibition of slavery in the federal territories, in the 
instances in which they acted upon the question. But 
for what reasons they so voted is not known. They 
may have done so because they thought a proper divi- 
sion of local from federal authority, or some provision 
or principle of the Constitution, stood in the way, or 
they may. without any such question, have voted against 
the prohibition on what appeared to them to be suffi- 
cient grounds of expediency. No one who has sworn 
to support the Constitution can conscientiously vote 
for what he understands to be an unconstitutional 
measure, however expedient he may think it ; but one 
may and ought to vote against a measure which he 
deems constitutional if, at the same time, he deems it 
inexpedient. It, therefore, would be unsafe to set 
down even the two who voted against the prohibition 
as having done so because, in their understanding, any 
proper division of local from federal authority, or any- 
thing in the Constitution, forbade the federal govern- 
ment to control as to slavery in federal territory. The 
remaining sixteen of the "thirty-nine," so far as I have 
discovered, have left no record of their vmderstanding 
upon the direct question of federal control of slavery 
in the federal territories. But there is much reason 
to believe that their understanding upon that question 
would not have appeared ditTerent from that of their 
twenty-three compeers, had it been manifested at all. 

For the purpose of adhering rigidly to the text, I 
have purposely omitted whatever understanding may 
have been manifested by any person, however distin- 
guished, other than the thirty-nine fathers who framed 
the original Constitution ; and, for the same reason, I 
have also omitted whatever understanding may have 



240 Appendix 

been manifested by any of the "thirty-nine" even on 
any other phase of the general question of slavery. If 
we should look into their acts and declarations on those 
other phases, as the foreign slave trade, and the moral- 
ity and policy of slavery generally, it would appear to 
us that on the direct question of federal control of 
slavery in federal territories, the sixteen, if they had 
acted at all, would probably have acted just as the 
twenty-three did. Among that sixteen were several 
of the most noted antislavery men of those times, — as 
Dr. Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and Gouverneur 
Morris, — while there was not one now known to have 
been otherwise, unless it may be John Rutledge, of 
South Carolina. 

The sum of the whole is that of our thirty-nine 
fathers who framed the original Constitution, twenty- 
one — a clear majority of the whole — certainly under- 
stood that no proper division of local from federal 
authority, nor any part of the Constitution, forbade 
the federal government to control slavery in the federal 
territories ; while all the rest had probably the same 
understanding. Such, unquestionably, was the under- 
standing of our fathers who framed the original Con- 
stitution ; and the text affirms that they understood the 
question "better than we." 

But, so far, I have been considering the understand- 
ing of the question manifested by the framers of the 
original Constitution. In and by the original instru- 
ment, a mode was provided for amending it ; and, as I 
have already stated, the present frame of "the govern- 
ment under which we live" consists of that original, 
and twelve amendatory articles framed and adopted 
since. Those who now insist that federal control of 
slavery in federal territories violates the Constitution, 
point us to the provisions which they suppose it thus 
violates ; and, as I understand, they all fix upon provi- 
sions in these amendatory articles, and not in the origi- 
nal instrument. The Supreme Court, in the Dred Scott 
case, plant themselves upon the fifth amendment. 



Addresses and State Papers 241 

which provides that no person shall be deprived of 
"life, liberty, or property without due process of law" ; 
while Senator Douglas and his peculiar adherents plant 
themselves upon the tenth amendment, providing that 
"the powers not delegated to the United States by the 
Constitution" "are reserved to the states respectively, 
or to the people." 

Now, it so happens that these amendments were 
framed by the first Congress which sat under the Con- 
stitution — the identical Congress which passed the act, 
already mentioned, enforcing the prohibition of sla- 
very in the Northwestern Territory. Not only was it 
the same Congress, but they were the identical, same 
individual men who, at the same session, and at the 
same time within the session, had under consideration, 
and in progress toward maturity, these constitutional 
amendments, and this act prohibiting slavery in all the 
territory the nation then owned. The constitutional 
amendments were introduced before, and passed after, 
the act enforcing the ordinance of '87 ; so that, during 
the whole pendency of the act to enforce the ordi- 
nance, the constitutional amendments were also 
pending. 

The seventy-six members of that Congress, including 
sixteen of the framers of the original Constitution, as 
before stated, were preeminently our fathers who 
framed that part of "the government vmder which we 
live" which is now claimed as forbidding the federal 
government to control slavery in the federal territories. 

Is it not a little presumptuous in any one at this day 
to affirm that the two things which that Congress de- 
liberately framed, and carried to maturity at the same 
time, are absolutely inconsistent with each other ? And 
does not such affirmation become impudently absurd 
when coupled with the other affirmation, from the 
same mouth, that those who did the two things alleged 
to be inconsistent, understood whether they really were 
inconsistent better than we — better than he who affirms 
that they are inconsistent ? 



242 Appendix 

It is surely safe to assume that the thirty-nine 
framers of the original Constitution, and the seventy- 
six members of the Congress which framed the amend- 
ments thereto, taken together, do certainly include 
those who may be fairly called "our fathers who framed 
the government under which we live." And so as- 
suming, I defy any man to show that any one of them 
ever, in his whole life, declared that, in his understand- 
ing, any proper division of local from federal authority. 
or any part of the Constitution, forbade the federal 
government to control as to slavery in the federal ter- 
ritories. I go a step further. I defy any one to show 
that any living man in the whole world ever did, prior 
to the beginning of the present century (and I might 
almost say prior to the beginning of the last half of 
the present century), declare that, in his understand- 
ing, any proper division of local from federal authority. 
or any part of the Constitution, forbade the federal 
government to control as to slavery in the federal 
territories. To those who now so declare I give 
not only "our fathers who framed the government 
under which w^e live," but with them all other liv- 
ing men within the century in which it was framed, 
among whom to search, and they shall not be able 
to find the evidence of a single man agreeing with 
them. 

Now, and here, let me guard a little against being 
misunderstood. I do not mean to say we are bound 
to follow implicitly in whatever our fathers did. To 
do so, would be to discard all the lights of current ex- 
perience — to reject all progress, all improvement. 
What I do say is, that if we would supplant the opin- 
ions and policy of our fathers in any case, we should 
do so upon evidence so conclusive, and argument so 
clear, that even their great authority, fairly considered 
and weighed, cannot stand ; and most surely not in a 
case whereof we ourselves declare they understood 
the question better than we. 

If any man at this day sincerely believes that a 



Addresses and State Papers 243 

proper division of local from federal authority, or any 
part of the Constitution, forbids the federal govern- 
ment to control as to slavery in the federal territories, 
he is right to say so, and to enforce his position by all 
truthful evidence and fair argument which he can. 
But he has no right to mislead others who have less 
access to history, and less leisure to study it, into the 
false belief that "our fathers who framed the govern- 
ment under which we live" were of the same opinion 
— thus substituting falsehood and deception for truth- 
ful evidence and fair argument. If any man at this 
day sincerely believes "our fathers who framed the 
government u.nder which we live" used and applied 
principles, in other cases, which ought to have led them 
to understand that a proper division of local from fed- 
eral authority, or some part of the Constitution, for- 
bids the federal government to control as to slavery in 
the federal territories, he is right to say so. But he 
should, at the same time, brave the responsibility of 
declaring that, in his opinion, he understands their 
principles better than they did themselves ; and espe- 
cially should he not shirk that responsibility by assert- 
ing that they "understood the question just as well and 
even better than we do now." 

But enough ! Let all who believe that "our fathers 
who framed the government under which we live un- 
derstood this question just as well, and even better 
than we do now," speak as they spoke, and act as they 
acted upon it. This is all Republicans ask, all Repub- 
licans desire, in relation to slavery. As those fathers 
marked it, so let it be again marked, as an evil not to be 
extended, but to be tolerated and protected only be- 
cause of and so far as its actual presence among us 
makes that toleration and protection a necessity. Let 
all the guaranties those fathers gave it be not grudg- 
ingly, but fullv, and fairly maintained. For this Re- 
publicans contend, and with this, so far as I know or 
believe, they will be content. 

And now, if they would listen, — as I suppose they 



244 Appendix 

will not, — I would address a few words to the Southern 
people. 

I would say to them : You consider yourselves a 
reasonable and a just people ; and I consider that in 
the general qualities of reason and justice you are not 
inferior to any other people. Still, when you speak of 
us Republicans, you do so only to denounce us as rep- 
tiles, or, at the best, as no better than outlaws. You 
will grant a hearing to pirates or murderers, but noth- 
ing like it to "Black Republicans." In all your conten- 
tions with one another, each of you deems an uncon- 
ditional condemnation of "Black Republicanism" as 
the first thing to be attended to. Indeed, such con- 
demnation of us seems to be an indispensable prerequi- 
site — license, so to speak — among you to be admitted 
or permitted to speak at all. Now, can you or not be 
prevailed upon to pause and to consider whether this 
is quite just to us, or even to yourselves? Bring for- 
ward your charges and specifications, and then be pa- 
tient long enough to hear us deny or justify. 

You say we are sectional. W'e deny it. That makes 
an issue ; and the burden of proof is upon you. You 
produce your proof; and what is it? Why, that oiir 
party has no existence in your section — gets no votes 
in your section. The fact is substantially true ; but 
does it prove the issue? If it does, then, in case we 
should, without change of principle, begin to get votes 
in your section, we should thereby cease to be sectional. 
You cannot escape this conclusion ; and yet, are you 
willing to abide by it? If you are, you will probably 
soon find that we have ceased to be sectional, for we 
shall get votes in your section this very year. You will 
then begin to discover, as the truth plainly is, that your 
proof does not touch the issue. The fact that we get 
no votes in your section is a fact of your making, and 
not of ours. And if there be fault in that fact, that 
fault is primarily yours, and remains so until you show 
that we repel you by some wrong principle or practice. 
If we do repel you by any wrong principle or practice, 



Addresses and State Papers 245 

the fault is ours ; but this brings you to where you 
ought to have started — to a discussion of the right or 
wrong of our principle. If our principle, put in prac- 
tice, would wrong your section for the benefit of ours, 
or for any other object, then our principle, and we 
with it, are sectional, and are justly opposed and de- 
nounced as such. Meet us, then, on the question of 
whether our principle, put in practice, would wrong 
your section ; and so meet us as if it were possible that 
something may be said on our side. Do you accept 
the challenge? No! Then you really believe that the 
principle which "our fathers who framed the govern- 
ment under which we live" thought so clearly right as 
to adopt it, and indorse it again and again, upon their 
official oaths, is in fact so clearly wrong as to demand 
your condemnation without a moment's consideration. 

Some of you delight to flaunt in our faces the warn- 
ing against sectional parties given by Washington in his 
Farewell Address. Less than eight years before \\'ash- 
ington gave that warning he had, as President of the 
United States, approved and signed an act of Congress 
enforcing the prohibition of slavery in the Northwest- 
ern Territory, which act embodied the policy of the 
government upon that subject up to and at the very 
moment he penned that warning; and about one year 
after he penned it, he wrote Lafayette that he consid- 
ered that prohibition a wise measure, expressing in 
the same connection his hope that we should at some 
time have a confederacy of free states. 

Bearing this in mind, and seeing that sectionalism 
has since arisen upon this same subject, is that warning 
a weapon in your hands against us, or in our hands 
against you? Could Washington himself speak, would 
he cast the blame of that sectionalism upon us, who 
sustain his policy, or upon you. who repudiate it? We 
respect that warning of Washington, and we commend 
it to you, together with his example pointing to the 
right application of it. 

But you say you are conservative — eminently con- 



246 Appendix 

servative — while we are revolutionary, destructive, or 
something of the sort. 

What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the 
old and tried, against the new and untried? We stick 
to, contend for, the identical old policy on the point in 
controversy which was adopted by "our fathers who 
framed the government tmder which we live" ; while 
you with one accord reject, and scout, and spit upon 
that old policy, and insist upon substituting something 
new. True, you disagree among yourselves as to what 
that substitute shall be. You are divided on new prop- 
ositions and plans, but you are unanimous in rejecting 
and denouncing the old policy of the fathers. Some 
of you are for reviving the foreign slave trade ; some 
for a congressional slave code for the territories ; some 
for Congress forbidding the territories to prohibit sla- 
very within their limits ; some for maintaining slavery 
in the territories through the judiciary ; some for the 
"gur-reat pur-rinciple" that "if one man would enslave 
another, no third man should object," fantastically 
called "popular sovereignty" ; but never a man among 
you is in favor of federal prohibition of slavery in fed- 
eral territories, according to the practice of "our fathers 
who framed the government under which we live." 
Not one of all your various plans can show a precedent 
or an advocate in the century within which our gov- 
ernment originated. Consider, then, whether your 
claim of conservatism for yourselves, and your charge 
of destructiveness against us, are based on the most 
clear and stable foundations. 

Again, you say we have made the slavery question 
more prominent than it formerly was. We deny it. 
We admit that it is more prominent, but we deny that 
we made it so. It w^as not we, but you, who discarded 
the old policy of the fathers. We resisted, and still 
resist, your innovation ; and thence comes the greater 
prominence of the question. Would you have that 
question reduced to its former proportions? Go back- 
to that old policy. What has been will be again, under 



Addresses and State Papers 247 

the same conditions. If yon would have the peace of 
the old times, readopt the precepts and policy of the 
old times. 

You charge that we stir up insurrections among your 
slaves. We deny it; and what is your proof? Har- 
pers Ferry ! John Brown ! John Brown was no Re- 
publican ; and you have failed to implicate a single 
Republican in his Harpers Ferry enterprise. H any 
member of our party is guilty in that matter, you know 
it. or you do not know it. H you do know it, you are 
inexcusable for not designating the man and proving 
the fact. If you do not know it, you are inexcusable 
for asserting it, and especially for persisting in the as- 
sertion after you have tried and failed to make the 
proof. You need not be told that persisting in a charge 
which one does not know to be true is simply malicious 
slander. 

Some of you admit that no Republican designedly 
aided or encouraged the Harpers Ferry affair, but still 
insist that our doctrines and declarations necessarily 
lead to such results. We do not believe it. We know 
we hold no doctrine, and make no declaration, which 
were not held to and made by "our fathers who framed 
the government under which we live." You never 
dealt fairly by us in relation to this affair. When it 
occurred, some important state elections were near at 
hand, and you were in evident glee with the belief that, 
by charging the blame upon us, you could get an ad- 
vantage of us in those elections. The elections came, 
and your expectations were not quite fulfilled. Every 
Republican man knew that, as to himself at least, your 
charge was a slander, and he was not much inclined by 
it to cast his vote in your favor. Republican doctrines 
and declarations are accompanied with a continual pro- 
test against any interference whatever with your 
slaves, or with you about your slaves. Surely this does 
not encourage them to revolt. True, we do, in com- 
mon with "our fathers who framed the governmerit 
under which we live," declare our belief that slavery is 



248 Appendix 

wrong ; but the slaves do not hear us declare even this. 
For anything we say or do, the slaves would scarcely 
know there is a Republican party. I believe they would 
not, in fact, generally know it but for your misrepre- 
sentations of us in their hearing. In your political 
contests among yourselves, each faction charges the 
other with sympathy with Black Republicanism; and 
then, to give point to the charge, defines Black Repub- 
licanism to simply be insurrection, blood, and thunder 
among the slaves. 

Slave insurrections are no more common now than 
they were before the Republican party was organized. 
What induced the Southampton insurrection, twenty- 
eight years ago, in which at least three times as many 
lives were lost as at Harpers Ferry ? You can scarcely 
stretch your very elastic fancy to the conclusion that 
Southampton was "got up by Black Republicanism." 
In the present state of things in the United States, I 
do not think a general, or even a very extensive, slave 
insurrection is possible. The indispensable concert of 
action cannot be attained. The slaves have no means 
of rapid communication ; nor can incendiary freemen, 
black or white, supply it. The explosive materials are 
everywhere in parcels ; but there neither are, nor can 
be, supplied the indis])ensable connecting trains. 

Much is said by Southern people about the affec- 
tion of slaves for their masters and mistresses ; and a 
part of it, at least, is true. A plot for an uprising 
could scarcely be devised and communicated to twenty 
individuals before some one of them, to save the life 
of a favorite master or mistress, would divulge it. 
This is the rule ; and the slave revolution in Haiti was 
not an exception to it, but a case occurring under pe- 
culiar circumstances. The Gunpowder Plot of British 
history, though not connected with slaves, was more 
in point. In that case, only about twenty were ad- 
mitted to the secret ; and yet one of them, in his anxiety 
to save a friend, betrayed the jilot to that friend, and. 
by consequence, averted the calamity. Occasional poi- 



Addresses and State Papers 249 

sonings from the kitchen, and open or stealthy assas- 
sinations in the field, and local revolts extending to a 
score or so, will continue to occur as the natural results 
of slavery; but no general insurrection of slaves, as I 
think, can happen in this country for a long time. 
Whoever much fears, or much hopes, for such an 
event, will be alike disappointed. 

In the language of Mr. Jefiferson, uttered many years 
ago, "It is still in our power to direct the process of 
emancipation and deportation peaceably, and in such 
slow degrees as that the evil will wear ofif insensibly, 
and their places be, pari passu, filled up by free white 
laborers. If, on the contrary, it is left to force itself 
on, human nature must shudder at the prospect held 
up." 

Mr. Jefiferson did not mean to say, nor do I, that the 
power of emancipation is in the federal government. 
He spoke of Virginia ; and, as to the power of emanci- 
pation, I speak of the slaveholding states only. The 
federal government, however, as we insist, has the 
power of restraining the extension of the institution 
— the power to insure that a slave insurrection shall 
never occur on any American soil which is now free 
from slavery. 

John Brown's effort was peculiar. It was not a slave 
insurrection. It was an attempt by white men to get 
up a revolt among slaves, in which the slaves refused 
to participate. In fact, it was so absurd that the slaves, 
with all their ignorance saw plainly enough it could not 
succeed. That afifair, in its philosophy, corresponds 
with the many attempts, related in history, at the as- 
sassination of kings and emperors. An enthusiast 
broods over the oppression of a people till he fancies 
himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate them. He 
ventures the attempt, which ends in little else than his 
own execution. Orsini's attempt on Louis Napoleon, 
and John Brown's attempt at Harpers Ferry, were, in 
their philosophy, precisely the same. The eagerness to 
cast blame on Old England in the one case, and on 



250 Appendix 

New England in die odier, does not disprove the same- 
ness of the two things. 

And how much would it avail you if you could, by 
the use of John Brown, Helper's book, and the like, 
break up the Republican organization ? Human action 
can be modified to some extent, but human nature 
cannot be changed. There is a judgment and a feeling 
against slavery in this nation, which cast at least a 
million and a half votes. You cannot destroy that 
judgment and feeling — that sentiment — by breaking 
up the political organization which rallies around it. 
You can scarcely scatter and disperse an army which 
has been formed into order in the face of your heaviest 
fire; but if you could, how much would you gain by 
forcing the sentiment which created it out of the peace- 
ful channel of the ballot box into some other channel? 
What would that other channel probably be? Would 
the number of John Browns be lessened or enlarged 
by the operation? 

But you will break up the Union rather than submit 
to a denial of your constitutional rights. 

That has a somewhat reckless sound ; but it would 
be palliated, if not fully justified, were we proposing, 
by the mere force of numbers, to deprive you of some 
right plainly written down in the Constitution. But 
we are proposing no such thing. 

When you make these declarations you have a spe- 
cific and well-understood allusion to an assumed con- 
stitutional right of yours to take slaves into the federal 
territories, and to hold them there as property. But no 
such right is specifically written in the Constitution. 
That instrument is literally silent about any such right. 
W'e, on the contrary, deny that such a right has any 
existence in the Constitution, even by implication. 

Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will 
destroy the government, unless you be allowed to con- 
strue and force the Constitution as you please, on all 
points in dispute between you and us. You will rule 
or ruin in all events. 



Addresses and State Papers 251 

This, plainly stated, is your language. Perhaps you 
will say the Supreme Court has decided the disputed 
constitutional question in your favor. Not quite so. 
But waiving the lawyer's distinction between dictum 
and decision, the court has decided the question for 
you in a sort of way. The court has substantially 
said, it is your constitutional right to take slaves into 
the federal territories, and to hold them there as 
property. When I say the decision was made in a sort 
of way, I mean it w^as made in a divided court, by a 
bare majority of the judges, and they not quite agree- 
ing with one another in the reasons for making it ; that 
it is so made as that its avowed supporters disagree 
with one another about its meaning, and that it was 
mainly based upon a mistaken statement of fact — the 
statement in the opinion that "the right of property 
in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the 
Constitution." 

An inspection of the Constitution will show that the 
right of property in a slave is not "distinctly and ex- 
pressly affirmed" in it. Bear in mind, the judges do 
not pledge their judicial opinion that such right is 
impliedly affirmed in the Constitution ; but they pledge 
their veracity that it is "distinctly and expressly" 
affirmed there — "distinctly," that is, not mingled with 
anything else ; "expressly," that is, in words meaning 
just that, without the aid of any inference, and sus- 
ceptible of no other meaning. 

If they had only pledged their judicial opinion that 
such right is affirmed in the instrument by implica- 
tion, it would be open to others to show that neither 
the word "slave" nor "slavery" is to be found in the 
Constitution, nor the word "property," even, in any 
connection with language alluding to the things slave 
or slavery ; and that wherever in that instrument the 
slave is alluded to, he is called a "person" ; and wher- 
ever his master's legal right in relation to him is al- 
luded to, it is spoken of as "service or labor which may 
be due" — as a debt payable in service or labor. Also 



252 Appendix 

it would be open to show, by contemporaneous history, 
that this mode of ahuding to slaves and slavery, instead 
of speaking of them, was employed on purpose to 
exclude from the Constitution the idea that there could 
be property in man. 

To show all this is easy and certain. 

When this obvious mistake of the judges shall be 
brought to their notice, is it not reasonable to expect 
that they will withdraw the mistaken statement, and 
reconsider the conclusion based upon it? 

And then it is to be remembered that "our fathers 
who framed the government under which we live" — 
the men who made the Constitution — decided this same 
constitutional question in our favor long ago ; decided 
it without division among themselves when making the 
decision ; without division among themselves about 
the meaning of it after it was made, and, so far as 
any evidence is left, without basing it upon any mis- 
taken statement of facts. 

Under all these circumstances, do you really feel 
yourselves justified to break up this government un- 
less such a court decision as yours is shall be at once 
submitted to as a conclusive and final rule of political 
action? But you will not abide the election of a 
Republican President ! In that supposed event, you 
say, you will destroy the Union ; and then, you say, 
the great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us! 
That is cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, 
and mutters through his teeth, "Stand and deliver, or 
I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer !" 

To be sure, what the robber demanded of me — my 
money — was my own ; and I had a clear right to keep 
it ; but it was no more my own than my vote is my 
own ; and the threat of death to me, to extort my 
money, and the threat of destruction to the Union, to 
extort my vote, can scarcely be distinguished in 
principle. 

A few words now to Republicans. It is exceedingly 
desirable that all parts of this great confederacy shall 



Addresses and State Papers 253 

be at peace, and in harmony one with another. T.et 
us Repubhcans do oiu- part to have it so. Even tlion.ijh 
much provoked, let us do nothinj:^ through passion and 
ill temper. Even though the Southern people will not 
so much as listen to us. let us calmly consider their 
demands, and yield to them if. in our deliberate view 
of our duty, we possibly can. Judging by all they say 
and do, and by the subject and nature of their con- 
troversy with us, let us determine, if we can, what 
will satisfy them. 

Will they be satisfied if the territories be uncondi- 
tionally surrendered to them ? We know they will not. 
In all their present complaints against us, the terri- 
tories are scarcely mentioned. Invasions and insur- 
rections are the rage now. W\\\ it satisfy them if, 
in the future, we have nothing to do with invasions 
and insurrections ? We know it will not. We so know, 
because we know we never had anything to do with 
invasions and insurrections ; and yet this total abstain- 
ing does not exempt us from the charge and the denun- 
ciation. 

The question recurs. What w^ill satisfy them? Sim- 
I)ly this : We must not only let them alone, but we 
must somehow convince them that we do let them 
alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. 
We have been so trying to convince them from the 
very beginning of our organization, but with no svic- 
cess. In all our platforms and speeches we have con- 
stantly protested our purpose to let them alone ; but 
this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike 
unavailing to convince them is the fact that they have 
never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb 
them. 

These natural and apparently adequate means all 
failing, what will convince them ? This, and this only : 
cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling 
it right. And this must be done thoroughly — done 
in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be toler- 
ated — we must place ourselves avowedly with them. 



254 Appendix 

Senator Douglas's new sedition law must be enacted 
and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery 
is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pul- 
pits, or in private. We must arrest and return their 
fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull 
down our free-state constitutions. The whole atmos- 
phere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition 
to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all 
their troubles proceed from us. 

I am quite aware they do not state their case pre- 
cisely in this way. Most of them would probably say 
to us, "Let us alone ; do nothing to us, and say what 
you please about slavery." But we do let them alone 
— have never disturbed them — so that, after all, it is 
what we say which dissatisfies them. They will con- 
tinue to accuse us of doing, until we cease saying. 

I am also aware they have not as yet in terms de- 
manded the overthrow of our free-state constitutions. 
Yet those constitutions declare the wrong of slavery 
with more solemn emphasis than do all other sayings 
against it; and when all these other sayings shall have 
been silenced, the overthrow of these constitutions will 
be demanded, and nothing be left to resist the demand. 
It is nothing to the contrary that they do not demand 
the whole of this just now. Demanding what they do, 
and for the reason they do, they can voluntarily stop 
nowhere short of this consummation. Holding, as 
they do, that slavery is morally right and socially ele- 
vating, they cannot cease to demand a full national 
recognition of it as a legal right and a social blessing. 

Nor can we justifiably withhold this on any ground 
save our conviction that slavery is wrong. If slavery 
is right, all words, acts, laws, and constitutions against 
it are themselves wrong, and should be silenced and 
swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly object to 
its nationality — its universality ; if it is wrong, they 
cannot justly insist upon its extension — its enlarge- 
ment. All they ask we could readily grant, if we 
thought slavery right ; all we ask they could as readily 



Addresses and State Papers 255 

grant, if they thought it wrong. Their thinking it right 
and our thinking it wrong is the i)reoise fact upon 
which depends the whole controversy. Thinking it 
right, as they do. they arc not to hhune for desiring 
its full recognition as being right ; l)Ut thinking it 
wrong, as we do, can we yield to them? Can we 
cast our votes with their view, and against our own? 
In view of our moral, social, and political responsi- 
bilities, can we do this? 

Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to 
let it alone where it is, because that nuich is due to the 
necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation ; 
but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it 
to spread into the national territories, and to overrun 
us here in these free states? If our sense of duty 
forbids this, then let us stand by our duty fearlessly 
and eilectively. Let us be diverted by none of those 
so])histical contrivances wherewith we are so indus- 
triously plied and belabored — contrivances such as 
groping for some middle ground between the right and 
the wrong, vain as the search for a man who should 
be neither a living man nor a dead man ; such as a 
policy of "don't care," on a question about which all 
true men do care ; such as Union appeals beseeching 
true Union men to yield to disunionists, reversing the 
Divine rule, and calling not the sinners, but the right- 
eous to repentance ; such as invocations to Washington, 
imploring men to unsay what Washington said, and 
undo what Washington did. 

Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false 
accusations against us. nor frightened from it by 
menaces of destruction to the government, nor of dun- 
geons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes 
might, and in that faith let us to the end dare to do 
our duty as we understand it. 



256 Appendix 



Farewell Address at Springfield, Illinois. 
February ii, i86i 

The burden of his oncoming task already weighed upon 
Lincoln as the moment approached when he was to leave 
the freedom of his western home to direct the uncertain 
helm of the national administration, which, under his incom- 
petent predecessor, had been allowed so long to drift. The 
critical eyes of the impatient North were upon him ; a de- 
clared and suspicious foe in the South was before him. The 
feelings native to his large heart were deeply stirred. He 
loved his neighbors with an affection which only such an 
occasion as this could fully disclose — an affection as sincere 
and unmistakable as their estimation of the tremendous 
task awaiting him must have been hazy and unrealized. There 
are various versions of the Farewell Address. Herndon, III : 
486 f., reproduces one published in the Springfield papers 
and evidently ill-reported. A more beautiful form of it — the 
version which appears on this page — was later published by 
Nicolay and Hay, from the original manuscript. 

Henry B. Rankin's version is a collation from the partial 
stenographic notes of reporters and the memory of friends 
who heard the address. See his "Recollections," p. 223. 

My Friends : No one, not in my situation, can ap- 
preciate my feelings of sadness at this parting. To this 
place, and the kindness of these people, I owe every- 
thing. Here I have lived a quarter of a century, and 
have passed from a young to an old man. Here my 
children have been born, and one is buried. I now 
leave, not knowing when or whether ever I may return, 
with a task before me greater than that which rested 
tipon Washington. Without the assistance of that 
Divine Being who ever attended him, I cannot suc- 
ceed. With that assistance, I cannot fail. Trusting 
in Him, who can go with me, and remain with you, 
and be everywhere for good, let us confidently hop'^ 
that all will yet be well. To His care commending 
you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me. 
I bid vou an affectionate farewell. 



Addresses and State Papers 257 



Speech at Independence Hall, Philadelphlv. 
February 22, 1861 

This remarkable address summarizes the spirit of Lincohi's 
life and conclusions to the moment of its delivery. He was 
the deepest interpreter of his time of the spirit of the men 
who founded the repul)lic. With the peculiar task before 
him, and conscious of the threats already made to assassinate 
him, he felt the striking kinship between their motives and 
his. This feeling inspired his words, which to us seem pro- 
phetic of the tragedy which closed his career. 

I am filled with deep emotion at finding myself 
standing in this place, where were collected together 
the wisdom, the patriotism, the devotion to principle, 
from which sprang the institutions under which we 
live. 

You have kindly suggested to me that in my hands 
is the task of restoring peace to our distracted coun- 
try. I can say in return, sir, that all the political 
sentiments I entertain have been drawn, so far as I 
have been able to draw them, from the sentiments 
which originated in and were given to the world from 
this hall. I have never had a feeling, politically, that 
did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the 
Declaration of Independence. 

I have often pondered over the dangers which were 
incurred by the men who assembled here and framed 
and adopted that declaration. I have pondered over 
the toils that were endured by the officers and soldiers 
of the army who achieved that independence. I have 
often inquired of myself what great principle or idea 
it was that kept this Confederacy so long together. 
It was not the mere matter of separation of the colo- 
nies from the motherland, but that sentiment in the 
Declaration of Indei)endence which gave liberty not 
alone to the people of this country, but hope to all the 
world, for all future time. It was that which gave 
promise that in due time the weights would be lifted 
from the shoulders of all men, and that all should 



258 Appendix 

have an equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied 
in the Declaration of Independence. 

Now, my friends, can this country be saved on that 
basis? If it can, I will consider myself one of the 
happiest men in the world if I can help to save it. 
If it cannot be saved upon that principle, it will be 
truly awful. But if this country cannot be saved 
without giving up that principle, I was about to say 
I would rather be assassfnated on this spot than sur- 
render it. 

Now, in my view of the present aspect of afifairs, 
there is no need of bloodshed and war. There is no 
necessity for it. I am not in favor of such a course ; 
and I may say in advance that there will be no blood- 
shed unless it is forced upon the government. The 
government will not use force unless force is used 
against it. 

My friends, this is wholly an unprepared speech. I 
did not expect to be called on to say a word when I 
came here. I supposed that I was merely to do some- 
thing toward raising a flag. I may, therefore, have 
said something indiscreet. But I have said nothing 
but what I am willing to live by. and, if it. be the 
pleasure of Almighty God, to die by. 



First Inaugural Address. March 4, 1861 

This address was both an appeal and a warning to the seven 
Confederate States, organized under a provisional govern- 
ment at Montgomery, Alabama, during the month previous. 
The two contrasting views of the slavery issue are clearly 
stated, together with a succinct argument defining the nature 
of the Union and the obligation of the President to enforce 
its laws when broken. Secession is likened to anarch}', and 
the responsibility of possible civil war is shown to rest with 
the secessionists themselves. On the platform with the Presi- 
dent were the retiring President Buchanan. ex-President 
I'Vanklin Pierce, Chief-Justice Taney, who administered the 
oath of oflice, and Stephen A. Douglas, who chivalrously 
held the President's hat and cane during the address, and 
gracefully shook his hand in congratulation and assurance 



Addresses and State Papers 259 

of his loyalty to him, after its delivery. Douglas was splen- 
didly loyal to the President until his death, which came sud- 
denly on June ii following, at the age of forty-eight. 

Fellow Citizens of the United States : In com- 
pliance with a custom as old as the government itself, 
I appear before you to address you briefly, and to take 
in your presence the oath prescribed by the Constitu- 
tion of the United States to be taken by the President 
"before he enters on the execution of his office." 

I do not consider it necessary at present for me to 
discuss those matters of administration about which 
there is no special anxiety or excitement. 

Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the 
Southern states that by the accession of a Republican 
administration their property and their peace and per- 
sonal security are to be endangered. There has never 
been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. In- 
deed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all 
the while existed and been open to their inspection. 
It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him 
who now addresses you. I do but quote from one 
of those speeches when I declare that "I have no pur- 
pose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the insti- 
tution of slavery in the states where it exists. I be- 
lieve I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no 
inclination to do so." Those who nominated and 
elected me did so with full knowledge that I had made 
this and many similar declarations, and had never 
recanted them. And, more than this, they placed in 
the platform for my acceptance, and as a law to them- 
selves and to me, the clear and emphatic resolution 
which I now read : 

Resolved. That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of 
the states, and especially the right of each state to order and 
control its own domestic institutions according to its own 
judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power 
on which the perfection and endurance of nur political fabric 
depend, and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force 
of the soil of any state or territory, no matter under what 
pretext, as among the gravest of crimes. 



260 Appendix 

I now reiterate these sentiments ; and, in doing so, I 
only press upon the pubhc attention the most con- 
clusive evidence of which the case is susceptible, that 
the property, peace, and security of no section are to 
be in any wise endangered by the now incoming admin- 
istration. I add, too, that all the protection which, 
consistently with the Constitution and the laws, can 
be given, will be cheerfully given to all the states when 
lawfully demanded, for whatever cause — as cheerfully 
to one section as to another. 

There is much controversy about the delivering up 
of fugitives from service or labor. The clause I now 
read is as plainly written in the Constitution as any 
other of its provisions : 

No person held to service or labor in one state, under the 
laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of 
any law or regulation therein be discharged from such service 
or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party 
to whom such service or labor ma\^ be due. 

It is scarcely questioned that this provision was in- 
tended by those who made it for the reclaiming of what 
we call fugitive slaves ; and the intention of the law- 
giver is the law. All members of Congress swear 
their support to the whole Constitution — to this pro- 
vision as much as to any other. To the proposition, 
then, that slaves whose cases come wathin the terms 
of this clause "shall be delivered up," their oaths are 
unanimous. Now, if they would make the effort in 
good temper, could they not with nearly equal una- 
nimity frame and pass a law by means of which to keep 
good that unanimous oath? 

There is some difference of opinion whether this 
clause should be enforced by national or by state au- 
thority ; but surely that difference is not a very mate- 
rial one. If the slave is to be surrendered, it can be 
of but little consequence to him or to others by which 
authority it is done. And shotild any one in any case 
be content that his oath shall go unkept on a merely 



Addresses and State Papers 261 

unsubstantial controversy as to how it shall be kept? 

Again, in any law upon this subject, ought not all the 
safeguards of liberty known in civilized and humane 
jurisprudence to be introduced, so that a free man be 
not, in any case, surrendered as a slave? And might 
it not be well at the same time to provide by law lor 
the enforcement of that clause in the Constitution 
which guarantees that "the citizen of each state shall 
be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens 
in the several states?" 

I take the official oath to-day with no mental reser- 
vations, and* with no purpose to construe the Consti- 
tution or laws by any hypercritical rules. And while 
I do not choose now to specify particular acts of Con- 
gress as proper to be enforced, I do suggest that it will 
be much safer for all, both in official and private sta- 
tions, to conform to and abide by all those acts which 
stand unrepealed, than to violate any of them, trust- 
ing to find impunity in having them held to be uncon- 
stitutional. 

It is seventy-two years since the first inauguration 
of a President under our national Constitution. Dur- 
ing that period fifteen different and greatly distin- 
guished citizens have, in succession, administered the 
executive branch of the government. They have con- 
ducted it through many perils, and generally with great 
success. Yet, with all this scope of precedent. I now 
enter upon the same task for the brief constitutional 
term of four years under great and peculiar difficulty. 
A disruption of the federal Union, heretofore only 
menaced, is now formidably attempted. 

I hold that, in contemplation of universal law and 
of the Constitution, the Union of these states is per- 
petual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the 
fundamental law of all national governments. It is 
safe to assert that no government proper ever had a 
provision in its organic law for its own termination. 
Continue to execute all the express provisions of our 
national Constitution, and the Union will endure for- 



262 Appendix 

ever — it being impossible to destroy it except by some 
action not provided for in the instrument itself. 

Again, if the United States be not a government 
proper, but an association of states in the nature of 
contract merely, can it, as a contract, be peaceably 
unmade by less than all the parties who made it ? One 
party to a contract may violate it — break it, so to 
speak ; but does it not require all to lawfully rescind it? 

Descending from these general principles, we find 
the proposition that in legal contemplation the Union 
is perpetual confirmed by the history of the Union 
itself. The Union is much older than the Constitu- 
tion. It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Asso- 
ciation in 1774. It was matured and continued by 
the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It was fur- 
ther matured, and the faith of all the then thirteen 
states expressly plighted and engaged that it should 
be perpetual, by the Articles of Confederation in 1778. 
And, finally, in 1787 one of the declared objects for 
ordaining and establishing the Constitution was "to 
form a more perfect Union." 

But if the destruction of the Union by one or by a 
part only of the states be lawfully possible, the Union 
is less perfect than before the Constitution, having 
lost the vital element of perpetuity. 

It follows from these views that no state upon its 
own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union; 
that resolves and ordinances to that efifect are legally 
void; and that acts of violence, within any state or 
states, against the authority of the United States, are 
insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circum- 
stances. 

I therefore consider that, in view of the Constitution 
and the laws, the Union is unbroken ; and to the extent 
of my ability I shall take care, as the Constitution itself 
expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union 
be faithfully executed in all the states. Doing this I 
deem to be only a simple duty on my part ; and I shall 
perform it so far as practicable, unless my rightful 



Addresses and State Papers 263 

masters, the American people, shall withhold the requi- 
site means, or in some authoritative manner direct the 
contrary. I trust this will not be regarded as a menace, 
but only as the declared purpose of the Union that it 
will constitutionally defend and maintain itself. 

In doing this there needs to be no bloodshed or vio- 
lence ; and there shall be none, unless it be forced upon 
the national authority. The power confided to me will 
be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and 
places belonging to the government, and to collect the 
duties and imposts ; but beyond what may be neces- 
sary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no 
using of force against or among the people anywhere. 
Where hostility to the United States, in any interior 
locality, shall be so great and universal as to prevent 
competent resident citizens from holding the federal 
offices, there will be no attempt to force obnoxious 
strangers among the people for that object. While 
the strict legal right may exist in the government to 
enforce the exercise of these offices, the attempt to do 
so would be so irritating, and so nearly impracticable 
withal, that I deem it better to forego for the time 
the uses of such offices. 

The mails, unless repelled, will continue to be fur- 
nished in all parts of the Union. So far as possible, 
the people everywhere shall have that sense of perfect 
security which is most favorable to calm thought and 
reflection. The course here indicated will be followed 
unless current events and experience shall show a 
modification or change to be proper, and in every case 
and exigency my best discretion will be exercised ac- 
cording to circumstances actually existing, and with a 
view and a hope of a peaceful solution of the national 
troubles and the restoration of fraternal sympathies 
and affections. 

That there are persons in one section or another 
who seek to destroy the Union at all events, and are 
glad of any pretext to do it, I will neither affirm nor 
deny ; but if there be such, I need address no word 



264 Appendix 

to them. To those, however, who really love the Union 
may I not speak? 

Before entering upon so grave a matter as the de- 
struction of our national fabric, with all its benefits, its 
memories, and its hopes, would it not be wise to ascer- 
tain precisely why we do it? Will you hazard so 
desperate a step while there is any possibility that 
any portion of the ills you fly from have no real exist- 
ence? Will you, while the certain ills you fly to are 
greater than all the real ones you fly from — will you 
risk the commission of so fearful a mistake? 

All profess to be content in the Union if all con- 
stitutional rights can be maintained. Is it true, then, 
that any right, plainly written in the Constitution, has 
been denied? I think not. Happily the human mind 
is so constituted that no party can reach to the audac- 
ity of doing this. Think, if you can, of a single in- 
stance in which a plainly written provision of the 
Constitution has ever been denied. If by the mere 
force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority 
of any clearly written constitutional right, it might, 
in a moral point of view, justify revolution — certainly 
would if such a right were a vital one. But such is 
not our case. All the vital rights of minorities and of 
individuals are so plainly assured to them by affirma- 
tions and negations, guaranties and prohibitions, in the 
Constitution, that controversies never arise concerning 
them. But no organic law can ever be framed with 
a provision specifically applicable to every question 
which may occur in practical administration. No fore- 
sight can anticipate, nor any document of reasonable 
length contain, express provisions for all possible ques- 
tions. Shall fugitives from labor be surrendered by 
national or by state authority? The Constitution does 
not expressly say. Alay Congress prohibit slavery in 
the territories? The Constitution does not expressly 
say. Must Congress protect slavery in the territories? 
The Constitution does not expressly say. 

From questions of this class spring all our const: tu- 



Addresses and State Papers 265 

tional controversies, and we divide upon them into 
majorities and minorities. If the minority will not 
acquiesce, the majority must, or the government must 
cease. There is no other alternative ; for continuing 
the government is acquiescence on one side or the other. 

If a minority in such case will secede rather than 
acquiesce, they make a precedent which in turn will 
divide and ruin them ; for a minority of their own will 
secede from them whenever a majority refuses to be 
controlled by such minority. For instance, why may 
not any portion of a new confederacy a year or two 
hence arbitrarily secede again, precisely as portions 
of the present Union now claim to secede from it? 
All who cherish disunion sentiments are now being 
educated to the exact temper of doing this. 

Is there such perfect identity of interests among the 
states to compose a new Union, as to produce harmony 
only, and prevent renewed secession? 

Plainly, the central idea of secession is the essence 
of anarchy. A majority held in restraint by consti- 
tutional checks and limitations, and always changing 
easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and 
sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. 
Whoever rejects it does, of necessity, fly to anarchy 
or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible ; the rule of 
a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly 
inadmissable ; so that, rejecting the majority principle, 
anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left. 

I do not forget the position, assumed by some, that 
constitutional questions are to be decided by the Su- 
preme Court ; nor do I deny that such decisions must 
be binding, in any case, upon the parties to a suit, 
as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled 
to very high respect and consideration in all parallel 
cases by all other departments of the government. 
And while it is obviously possible that such decision 
may be erroneous in any given case, still that evil effect 
following it, being limited to that particular case, 
with the chance that it may be overruled and never 



266 Appendix 

become a precedent for other cases, can better be borne 
than could the evils of a different practice. At the 
same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the 
policy of the government, upon vital questions aft'ecting 
the whole ])eople, is to be irrevocably fixed by deci- 
sions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, 
in ordinary litigation between parties in personal ac- 
tions, the people will have ceased to be their own 
rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their 
government into the hands of that eminent tribunal. 
Nor is there in this view any assault upon the court 
or the judges. It is a duty from which they may not 
shrink to decide cases properly brought before them, 
and it is no fault of theirs if others seek to turn their 
decisions to political purposes. 

One section of our country believes slavery is right, 
and ought to be extended, while the other believes it 
is wrong, and ought not to be extended. This is the 
only substantial dispute. The fugitive-slave clause 
of the Constitution, and the law for the suppression of 
the foreign slave trade, are each as well enforced, per- 
haps, as any law can ever be in a community where 
the moral sense of the people imperfectly supports 
the law itself. The great body of the people abide by 
the dry legal obligation in both cases, and a few break 
over in each. This, I think, cannot be perfectly cured ; 
and it would be worse in both cases after the separa- 
tion of the sections than before. The foreign slave 
trade, now imperfectly suppressed, would be ultimately 
revived, without restriction, in one section, while fugi- 
tive slaves, now only partially surrendered, would not 
be surrendered at all by the other. 

Physically speaking, we cannot separate. We can- 
not remove our respective sections from each other, 
nor build an impassable wall between them. A hus- 
band and wife may be divorced, and go out of the pres- 
ence and beyond the reach of each other; but the dif- 
ferent parts of our country cannot do this. They 
cannot but remain face to face, and intercourse, either 



Addresses and State Papers 267 

amicable or hostile, must continue between them. Is 
it possible, then, to make that intercourse more ad- 
vantageous or more satisfactory after separation than 
before? Can aliens make treaties easier than friends 
can make laws? Can treaties be more faithfully en- 
forced between aliens than laws can among friends? 
Suppose you go to war, you cannot fight always ; and 
when, after much loss on both sides, and no gain on 
either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions 
as to terms of intercourse are again upon you. 

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the 
jDeople who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow 
weary of the existing government, they can exercise 
their constitutional right of amending it, or their revo- 
lutionary right to dismember or overthrow it. I can- 
not be ignorant of the fact that many worthy and 
patriotic citizens are desirous of having the national 
Constitution amended. While I make no recommenda- 
tion of amendments, I fully recognize the rightful 
authority of the people over the whole subject, to be 
exercised in either of the modes prescribed in the in- 
strument itself ; and I should, under existing circvmi- 
stances, favor rather than oppose a fair opportunity 
being afforded the people to act upon it. I will ven- 
ture to add that to me the convention mode seems 
preferable, in that it allows amendments to originate 
with the people themselves, instead of only permitting 
them to take or reject propositions originated by others 
not especially chosen for the purpose, and which might 
not be precisely such as they would wish to either 
accept or refuse. I understand a proposed amend- 
ment to the Constitution — which amendment, how- 
ever, I have not seen — has passed Congress, to the 
effect that the federal government shall never inter- 
fere with, the domestic institutions of the states, includ- 
ing that of persons held to service. To avoid mis- 
construction of what I have said, I depart from my 
purpose not to speak of particular -amendments so far 
as to say that, holding such a provision to now be 



268 Appendix 

implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its 
being made express and irrevocable. 

The chief magistrate derives all his authority from 
the people, and they have conferred none upon him to 
hx terms for the separation of the states. The people 
themselves can do this also if they choose; but the 
executive, as such, has nothing to do with it. His 
duty is to administer the present government, as it 
came to his hands, and to transmit it, unimpaired by 
him, to his successor. 

Why should there not be a patient confidence in the 
ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or 
equal hope in the world ? In our present differences, 
is either party without faith of being in the right? 
If the Almighty Ruler of nations, with his eternal truth 
and justice, be on your side of the North, or on yours 
of the South, that truth and that justice will surely 
prevail by the judgment of this great tribunal of the 
American people. 

By the frame of the government under which we 
live, this same people have wisely given their public 
servants but little power for mischief ; and have, with 
equal wisdom, provided for the return of that little 
to their own hands at very short intervals. A\'hile the 
people retain their virtue and vigilance, no administra- 
tion, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very 
seriously injure the government in the short space of 
four years. 

My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and well 
upon this whole subject. Nothing valuable can be lost 
by taking time. If there be an object to hurry any of 
you in hot haste to a step which you would never take 
deliberately, that object will be frustrated by taking 
time ; but no good object can be frustrated by it. Such 
of you as are now dissatisfied still have the old Con- 
stitution unimpaired, and, on the sensitive point, the 
laws of your own framing inider it ; while the new 
administration will have no immediate power, if it 
would, to change either. If it were admitted that you 



Addresses and State Papers 269 

who are dissatisfied hold llie right side in the chspute. 
there still is no single good reason for ]:»reci])itate 
action. Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a 
firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this 
favored land, are still competent to adjust in the best 
way all our present difficulty. 

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, 
and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. 
The government will not assail you. You can have 
no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. 
You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy 
the government, while I shall have the most solemn 
one to "preserve, protect, and defend it." 

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. 
We must not be enemies. Though passion may have 
strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. 
The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every 
battle field and patriot grave to every living heart and 
hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the 
chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely 
they will be, by the better angels of our nature. 

Se\v.\rd's Thoughts for the President. 
April i. i86i 

On the first of April following the inauguration, William 
H. Seward. Lincoln's Secretary of State, .sent to the President 
a letter containing "Some Thoughts for the President's Con- 
sideration." He had misgivings about the President's ability 
to manage the complex situation before his administration, 
and suggested a vigorous domestic policy as well as an ex- 
tremely dangerous foreign policj-, intimating that he would 
be willing to direct these policies himself. Lincoln's reply 
was, as usual in emergencies, wisely temperate. He avoided 
the good chance the "Thoughts" offered for a rupture with 
his able but, in this instance, indiscreet cabinet official. A lit- 
tle later, June 5, Seward had revised his opinion of Lincoln. 
At that time he wrote to Mrs. Seward : "Executive force 
and vigor are rare qualities. The President is the best of us." 
This correspondence between Lincoln and Seward was not 
revealed to the public until it was published by Nicolay and 
Hay, in Vol. HI of their "Abraham Lincoln, a History." 



270 Appendix 

First. We are at the end of a month's administra- 
tion, and yet without a pohcy either domestic or 
foreign. 

Sccund. This, however, is not culpable, and it has 
even been unavoidable. The presence of the Senate, 
with the need to meet applications for patronage, have 
prevented attention to other and more grave matters. 

Third. But further delay to adopt and prosecute our 
policies for both domestic and foreign affairs would 
not only bring scandal on the administration, but 
danger upon the country. 

Fourth. To do this we must dismiss the applicants 
for office. But how ? I suggest that we make the local 
appointments forthwith, leaving foreign or general 
ones for ulterior and occasional action. 

Fifth. The policy at home. I am aware that my 
views are singular, and perhaps not sufficiently ex- 
plained. My system is built upon this idea as a ruling 
one, namely, that we must change the question be- 
fore the public from one upon slavery, or about 
slavery, for a question uj)on union or disunion: 

In other words, from what would be regarded as a 
party question, to one of patriotism or union. 

The occupation or evacuation of Fort Sumter, al- 
though not in fact a slavery or a party question, is so 
regarded. Witness the temper manifested by the Re- 
publicans in the free states, and even by the Union 
men in the South. 

I would therefore terminate it as a safe means 
for changing the issue. I deem it fortunate that the 
last administration created the necessity. 

For the rest, I would simultaneously defend and 
reen force all the ports in the gulf, and have the navy 
recalled from foreign stations to be prepared for a 
blockade. Put the island of Key West under martial 
law. 

This will raise distinctly the question of union or 
disunion. I would maintain every fort and possession 
in the South. 



Addresses and State Papers 271 

For rorc'ujn Nations 

■ I would demand explanations from Spain and 
France, categorically, at once. 

I would seek explanations from Great Britain and 
Russia, and send agents into Canada, Mexico, and 
Central x^Vmerica to rouse a vigorous continental spirit 
of independence on this continent against European 
intervention. 

And, if satisfactory explanations are not received 
from Spain and 1'' ranee, 

Would convene Congress and declare war against 
them. ' 

But whatever policy we adopt, there must be an 
energetic prosecution of it. 

For this purpose it must be somebody's business to 
pursue and direct it incessantly. 

Either the President must do it himself, and be all 
the while active in it, or 

Devolve it on some member of his cabinet. Once 
adopted, debates on it must end, and all agree and 
abide. 

It is not in my especial province ; 

But I neither seek to evade nor assume responsibility. 

NOTE IN REPLY TO SECRETARY SEWARd's "tHOUGHTS" 

Executive Mansion, April 1, i86i. 

My dear Sir : Since parting with you I have been 
considering your paper dated this day, and entitled 
"Some Thoughts for the President's Consideration." 
The first proposition in it is, "First, We are at the 
end of a month's administration, and yet without a 
policy either domestic or foreign." 

At the beginning of that month, in the inaugural, 
I said : "The power confided to me will be used to 
hold, occupy, and possess the property and places 
belonging to the government, and to collect the duties 
and imposts." This had your distinct approval at the 



272 Appendix 

time ; and, taken in connection with the order I imme- 
diately gave General Scott, directing him to employ 
every means in his power to strengthen and hold the 
forts, comprises the exact domestic policy you now 
urge, with the single exception that it does not pro- 
pose to abandon I'ort Sumter. 

Again, I do not perceive how the reenforcement of 
Fort Sumter would be done on a slavery or a party 
issue, while that of Fort Pickens would be on a more 
national and patriotic one. 

The news received yesterday in regard to St. Do- 
mingo certainly brings a new item within the range 
of our foreign policy ; but up to that time ,we have 
been preparing circulars and instructions to ministers 
and the like, all in perfect harmony, without even a 
suggestion that we had no foreign policy. 

Upon your closing propositions — that "whatever pol- 
icy we adopt, there must be an energetic prosecution 
of it. 

"For this purpose it must be somebody's business 
to pursue and direct it incessantly. 

"Either the President must do it himself, and be 
all the while active in it, or 

"Devolve it on some member of his cabinet. Once 
adopted, debates on it must end, and all agree and 
abide" — I remark that if this must be done, I must 
do it. When a general line of policy is adopted, I 
apprehend there is no danger of its being changed 
without good reason, or continuing to be a subject of 
unnecessary debate ; still, u])on points arising in its 
progress I wish, and suppose I am entitled to have, 
the advice of all the cabinet. 

Your obedient servant, 

A. Lincoln. 



Addresses and State Papers 273 

Message to Congress. December i, 1862 

This excerpt from Lincoln's second annual message to Con- 
gress is representative of his style and clarity of thoujjht in 
formal state papers. Already he had deeply considered the 
question of slavery, and had exchanged views on the subject 
with his cabinet advisers and with statesmen in Congress. He 
dissented from those who thought that colonization should be 
made compulsory; he favored colonizing the negroes in 
Central America, but did not favor driving them out against 
their wishes. He advocated in this message a Constitutional 
Amendment authorizing compensated emancipation and the 
expenditure of public money to effect colonization. He dis- 
cussed also the economics of negro labor, and closed his mes- 
sage with an appeal for well-considered and concerted action 
on the vital question of freeing the slaves. Party spirit was 
too deeply rooted at the time to surrender itself to the ideal 
of concerted national policy in a great emergency. Democrats 
and Republicans did not become emancipated from party in- 
terest sufficient!}'- for action with singleness of aim until the 
United States made war on Germanv and Austria-Hun.<Tarv 
(1917). 

The Civil War. which has so radically changed 
for the moment the occupations and habits of the 
American people, has necessarily disturbed the social 
condition and affected very deeply the prosperity of 
the nations with which we have carried on a com- 
merce that has been steadily increasing throughout 
a period of half a century. It has, at the same time, 
excited political ambitions and apprehensions which 
have produced a profound agitation throughout the 
civilized world. In this imusual agitation we have 
foreborne from taking part in any controversy between 
foreign States, and between parties or factions' in 
such States. We have attempted no propagandism 
and acknowledged no revolution. But we have left 
to every nation the exclusive conduct and management 
of its own affairs. . . . 

The proposed emancipation would shorten the war, 
perpetuate peace, instire this increase of pojnilation, 
and proportionately the wealth of the cotmtry. With 
these, we should pay all the emancipation would cost. 



274 Appendix 

together with our other debt, easier than we should 
pay our other debt without it. . . . 

I cannot make it better known than it ah-eady is that I 
favor colonization. And yet I wish to say there is an 
objection urged against free colored persons remaining 
in the country which is largely imaginary, if not some- 
times malicious. 

It is insisted that their presence would injure and 
displace white labor and white laborers. If there ever 
could be a proper time for mere catch arguments, that 
time surely is not now. In times like the present, 
men should utter nothing for which they would not 
willingly be responsible through time and in eternity. 
Is it true, then, that colored people can displace any 
more white labor by being free than by remaining" 
slaves? If they stay in their old places, they jostle 
no white laborers ; if they leave their old places, they 
leave them open to white laborers. . . . Emancipation, 
even without deportation, would probably enhance the 
wages of white labor, and very surely would not re- 
duce them. . . . With deportation, even to a limited 
extent, enhanced wages to white labor is mathematic- 
ally certain. Labor is like any other commodity in the 
market — increase the demand for it, and you increase 
the price for it. Reduce the supply of black labor by 
colonizing the black labor out of the country, and 1 y 
precisely so much you increase the demand for, and 
wages of, white labor. . . . 

Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of 
this Congress and this Administration will be remem- 
bered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance 
or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The 
fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, 
in honour or dishonour, to the latest generation. We 
say we are for the Union. The world will not forget 
that we say this. We know how to save the Union. 
The world knows we do know how to save it. 

We, even we here, hold the power and bear the re- 
sponsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure 



Addresses and State Papers 275 

freedom to the free — honourable ahke in what we s^^ive 
and what we preserve. We shall nobly save or meanly 
lose the last, best hope of earth. Other means may 
succeed; this could not fail. The way is ])lain, peace- 
ful, generous, just — a way which, if followed, the 
world will for ever applaud, and God must for ever 
bless. 

Emaxcipation Proclamation. January- i, 1863 

The President's disappointment over the poor military re- 
sults during the first part of the war intluenced tlie moment 
of emancipation. It was read by the President to his Cabinet 
July 22, 1862, and on Septemlicr 23. the Preliminary Procla- 
mation was given to the country, closely following the Fed- 
eral advantage in the battle of Antietam. On January i, 
1863, Lincoln issued the final proclamation. Lincoln's own 
story of the proclamation is given by Carpenter in "Six 
Months at the White House," chap. vii. An interesting 
reminiscence from Leonard Swett is told by Miss Tarbell, 
II: 113-114, who reproduces Carpenter's picture of the eman- 
cipation scene, page 116. Just before January i. the time 
fixed in the preliminary proclamation for the issue of the 
final document, some of the more radical friends of emanci- 
pation feared the President would weaken and not go the 
whole length. Dr. Sunderland, chaplain of the Senate, with 
a friend, called on Mr. Lincoln to urge fidelity to his promise. 
In the interview, in which he did not indicate his final course, 
the President mentioned Aisop's Fables as o'.ie of his "first 
books." Secretary Chase wrote the final paragraph invoking 
divine favor. Within two months after the final proclama- 
tion. British sentiment had set decidedly in favor of the 
Union cause. 

Whereas, on the twenty-second day of September, 
in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred 
and sixty-tw^o, a proclamation was issued by the Presi- 
dent of the United States, containing, among other 
things, the following, to wit : 

"That on the first day of January, in the year of our 
Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all 
persons held as slaves within any state, or designated 
part of a state, the people whereof shall then be in 
rebellion against the United States, shall be then. 



276 Appendix 

thenceforward, and forever free ; and the Executive 
Government of the United States, inchiding the mih- 
tary and naval authority thereof, will recognize and 
maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do 
no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, 
in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom. 

"That the Executive will, on the first day of Janu- 
ary aforesaid, by proclamation, designate the states and 
parts of states, if any, in which the people thereof 
respectively shall then be in rebellion against the 
United States ; and the fact that any state, or the people 
thereof, shall on that day be in good faith represented 
in the Congress of the United States by members 
chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the 
qualified voters of such state shall have participated, 
shall in the absence of strong countervailing testimony 
be deemed conclusive evidence that such state and the 
people thereof are not then in rebellion against the 
United States." 

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of 
the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested 
as commander in chief of the army and navy of the 
United States, in time of actual armed rebellion against 
the authority and government of the United States, 
and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppress- 
ing said rebellion, do, on this first day of January, in 
the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and 
sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to 
do, publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hun- 
dred days from the day first above mentioned, order 
and designate as the states and parts of states wherein 
the people thereof, respectively, are this day in rebel- 
lion against th? L'^nited States, the following, to wit : 

Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana (except the parishes of 
St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. 
Charles, St. James, Ascension, Assumption, Terre- 
bonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, 
including the city of New Orleans). Mississippi, Ala- 
bama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Caro- 



Addresses and State Papers 277 

lina, and Virginia (except the forty-eight counties des- 
ignated as West Virginia, and also the counties of 
Berkeley, Accomac, Northampton, h^lizabeth Citv, 
York, Princess Anne, and Norfolk, including the cities 
of Norfolk and Portsmouth), and which excepted 
parts are for the present left precisely as if this procla- 
mation were not issued. 

And by virtue of the power and for the purpose 
aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons 
held as slaves M^ithin said designated States and parts 
of States are, and henceforward shall be, free ; and that 
the Executive Government of the United States, in- 
cluding the military and naval authorities thereof, will 
recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons. 

And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to 
be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary 
self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all 
cases when allowed, they labour faithfully for reason- 
able wages. 

And I further declare and make known that such 
persons of suitable condition will be received into the 
armed service of the United States to garrison forts, 
positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels 
of all sorts in said service. 

And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of 
justice, warranted by the Constitution upon military 
necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of man- 
kind and the gracious favour of Almighty God. 

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, 

and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. 

Done at the city of Washington, this first 

day of January, in the year of our Lord one 

thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and 

[l. s.] of the independence of the United States of 

America the eighty-seventh. 

Abraham Lincoln. 

By the President : 

William H. Seward, 

Secretary of State. 



278 Appendix 

Address at the Dedication of the National Cem- 
etery AT Gettysburg. November 19, 1863 

The fame of the Gettysburg Address has subjected it to the 
most untiring scrutiny for possible antecedents of ideas and 
phrasings. Especially has the oft-quoted last clause of the 
Address invited search for parallels. Herndon found among 
Lincoln's papers, left in the laAV office at Springfield after his 
election to the Presidency, a pamphlet containing a sermon de- 
livered by Theodore Parker, at Boston, July 4, 1858. The 
sermon contains the following sentence, marked in the margin : 
"Democracy is Direct Self-Government, over all the people, by 
all the people, for all the people." In another place in the 
sermon, substantially the same phrasing is marked in the 
Lincoln copy. Lincoln'.s fine words may have been reminiscent 
of his reading of Parker's sermon. Eight years before (1850), 
Parker had used virtually the same description of democracy 
in a speech before the New England Anti-Slavery convention. 
Webster, in his second speech on Foot's Resolution, January 
26, 1830, had used substantially the same language. It is pos- 
sible to trace similar phrasing elsewhere, as far back as the 
preface of Wycliffe's Bible (1384). Mr. Isaac Markens, of 
New York City, in "Lincoln's Masterpiece," privately printed, 
exhibits a few interesting resemblances between Everett's Ora- 
tion and Lincoln's Address at Gettysburg, and points out that 
although Everett sent his oration to Lincoln before the dedi- 
cation took place, the "parallelisms may be explained as mere 
coincidences." Cf. Brooks' "Washington in Lincoln's Time." 
Whatever may be the antecedents of the great Address in 
Lincoln's mind, he gave the ideas a creation as literature as 
truly as Shakespeare created literature out of the originals of 
the "Merchant of Venice" and "Hamlet." 

Fourscore and seven years ago, oin- fathers brought 
forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in 
liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men 
are created equal. 

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing 
whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so 
dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great 
battle field of that war. We have come to dedicate 
a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those 
who here gave their lives that that nation might live. 
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should 
do this. 



Addresses and State Papers 279 

But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate — we cannot 
consecrate — we cannot hallow — this ground. The brave 
men, living and dead, who struggled here, have conse- 
crated it far above our poor power to add or detract. 
The world will little note nor long remember what we 
say here, but it can never forget what they did here. 
It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to 
the unfinished work which they who fought here have 
thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be 
here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — 
that from these honored dead we take increased devo- 
tion to that cause for which they gave the last full 
measure of devotion ; that we here highly resolve that 
these dead shall not have died in vain ; that this nation, 
under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and 
that government of the people, by the people, for the 
people, shall not perish from the earth. 

Speech Accepting Second Nomination. 
June 9, 1864 

This response of Lincoln to those notif\-ing him of his sec- 
ond nomination is marked by the greatest informality. His 
inherent sense of humility and his pioneerism cropped out on 
this occasion, but gave currency to the phrase about not swap- 
ping horses "while crossing the river." Lincoln's ideas and 
language were barometric ; they followed the conditions of the 
occasion, up or down, according to the importance which he 
attached to the event. 

Gentlemen : I can only say in response to the kind 
remarks of your chairman, as I sui)pose, that I am 
very grateful for the renewed confidence which has 
been accorded to me both by the convention and by the 
National League. I am not insensible at all to the per- 
sonal compliment there is in this, and yet I do not 
allow myself to believe that any but a small portion of 
it is to be appropriated as a personal compliment. That 
really the convention and the Union League assembled 
with a higher view — that of taking care of the inter- 
ests of the country for the present and the great future 



280 Appendix 

— and that the part I am entitled to appropriate as a 
compHment is only that part which I may lay hold of 
as being the opinion of the convention and of the 
League, that I am not entirely unworthy to be intrusted 
with the place which I have occupied for the last three 
years. But I do not allow myself to suppose that either 
the convention or the League have concluded to decide 
that I am either the greatest or best man in America, 
but rather they have concluded that it is not best to 
swap horses while crossing the river, and have further 
concluded that I am not so poor a horse that they mi;>ht 
not make a botch of it in trying to swap. 

Second Inaugural Address. ]\Larcii 4, 1865 

The Second Inaugural marks the high water level of Lin- 
coln's individuality in preparing a state paper. It is far re- 
moved from the conventionality usually employed on such an 
occasion. It embodies the feeling and language of religion 
with remarkable freedom. It illustrates brilliantly the char- 
acter of his own mind and heart, and atifords an example of his 
ability to trust and divine the soul of the people he addressed. 
His fine humility was united with great dignity and frankness. 
His love of direct thought was linked up with an unusual appre- 
ciation of good taste in speech. The Address is a perfect 
revelation of the man and his widened horizon as he emerged 
from the darker days of the rebellion. He had grown 
greater in the midst of tragic experiences. His poise had be- 
come even firmer, and his outlook spiritually refined. He had 
lent himself nobly to the perfection to be found in sufltering. 

Fellow Countrymen : At this second appearing 
to take the oath of the presidential office, there is less 
occasion for an extended address than there was at 
the first. Then a statement, somewhat in detail, of a 
course to be pursued, seemed fitting and proper. Now, 
at the expiration of four years, during which public 
declarations have been constantly called forth on every 
point and phase of the great contest which still ab- 
sorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the 
nation, little that is new could be presented. The prog- 
ress of our arms, u]:)on which all else chiefly depends, 



Addresses and State Papers 281 

is as well know n to the public as to myself ; and it 
is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to 
all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in 
regard to it is ventured. 

On the occasion corresponding to this four years 
ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impend- 
ing civil war. All dreaded it — all sought to avert it. 
While the inaugural address was being delivered from 
this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union with- 
out war, insurgent agents w^ere in the city seeking to 
destroy it without w^ar — seeking to dissolve the Union, 
and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties depre- 
cated war ; but one of them would make war rather 
than let the nation survive ; and the other would accept 
war rather than let it perish. And the war came. 

One-eighth of the whole population were colored 
slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but 
localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves con- 
stituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew 
that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. 
To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was 
the object for which the insurgents would rend the 
Union, even by w^ar ; while the government claimed no 
right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlarge- 
ment of it. 

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude 
or the duration which it has already attained. Neither 
anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease 
with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. 
Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less 
fundamental and astounding. Both read the same 
Bible, and pray to the same God ; and each invokes 
His aid against the other. It may seem strange that 
any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in 
wringing their bread from the sweat of otlier men's 
faces ; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The 
prayers of both could not be answered — that of neither 
has been answered fully. 

The Almighty has his own purposes. "Woe unto 



282 Appendix 

the world because of offenses ! for it must needs be 
that offenses come ; but woe to that man by whom 
the offense cometh." If we shah suppose that Ameri- 
can slavery is one of those offenses which, in the provi- 
dence of God, must needs come, but which, having 
continued through his appointed time, he now wills 
to remove, and that he gives to both North and South 
this terrible w^ar, as the woe due to those by whom 
the offense came, shall we discern therein any depar- 
ture from those divine attributes which the believers 
in a living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we 
hope — fervently do we pray — that this mighty scourge 
of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that 
it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's 
two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be 
sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the 
lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, 
as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be 
said, "The judgments of the Lord are true and right- 
eous altogether." 

With malice toward none ; with charity for all ; with 
firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, 
let us strive on to finish the work we are in ; to bind up 
the nation's wounds ; to care for him who shall have 
borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan — 
to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and last- 
ing peace among ourselves, and with all nations. 

Last Public Speech. April ii, 1865 

Lincoln's last public utterance was prepared carefully from 
the point of view of ideas ratlier than from that of elegance. 
He felt that the approach of the complex problems of recon- 
struction, Tbout which he knew there was much diversity and 
obstinacj^ of opinion, called for delicate and cautious discus- 
sion. Although he had suffered disappointment that his plan 
for Louisiana had not been followed by Congress-, now divided 
between Radicals and Conservatives, Lincoln favored negro 
suffrage under the restrictions here indicated. He would 
follow the general principle laid down for Louisiana in the 
reconstruction of the other southern states. That principle was 
to make reconstruction a ])ractical method for the readmission 



Addresses and State Papers 283 

of the erring states, unobstructed by metaphj'sical discussions 
about their constitutional status. He knew that the temper of 
Congress was tens-e and that a rupture wouUl be easy. His at- 
titude toward anj' problem was marked by reason and restraint. 
Hence, his suspicion of the wisdom of any "exclusive and in- 
flexible plan" such as Congress was disposed to demand. 
Hence, also, his intimation of "some new announcement to the 
people," which his tragic death prevented. The entangled 
policy of Congress which followed has led many students of 
reconstruction to look with favor upon the wisdom of the 
plan which was taking form in Lincoln's mind, upon the prin- 
ciple that the element of charity could be united with firmness 
in the realization of a strong reunited nation. 

Fellow Citizens : ^^'e meet this evening, not in 
sorrow, but in gladness of heart. The evacuation of 
Petersburg and Richmond, and the surrender of the 
principal insurgent army, give hope of a righteous and 
speedy peace, whose joyous expression cannot be re- 
strained. In the midst of this, however, He from 
whom all blessings flow nutst not be forgotten. A call 
for a national thanksgiving is being prepared, and 
will be duly promulgated. Nor must those whose 
harder part give us the cause of rejoicing be over- 
looked. Their honors must not be parceled out with 
others. I myself was near the front, and had the high 
pleasure of transmitting much of the good news to 
you ; but no part of the honor for plan or execution is 
mine. To General Grant, his skillful officers and brave 
men, all belongs. The gallant navy stood ready, but 
was not in reach to take active part. 

By these recent successes the reinauguration of the 
national authority — reconstruction — which has had a 
large share of thought from the first, is pressed much 
more closely upon our attention. It is fraught with 
great difficulty. Unlike a case of war between inde- 
pendent nations, there is no organized organ for us to 
treat with — no one man has authority to give up the 
rebellion for any other man. W'e simply must begin 
with and mold from disorganized and discordant ele- 
ments. Nor is it a small additional embarrassment 
that we, the loyal people, differ among ourselves as to 



284 Appendix 

the mode, manner, and measure of reconstruction. As 
a general rule, I abstain from reading the reports of 
attacks upon myself, wishing not to be provoked by 
that to which 1 cannot properly otter an answer. In 
spite of this precaution, however, it comes to my knowl- 
edge that 1 am much censured for some supposed 
agency in setting up and seeking to sustain the new 
state government of Louisiana. 

In this I have done just so much and no more than 
the public knows. In the annual message of Decem- 
ber, 1863, and in the accompanying proclamation,^ 
I presented a plan of reconstruction, as the phrase goes, 
which I promised, if adopted by any state, should be 
acceptable to and sustained by the executive govern- 
ment of the nation. I distinctly stated that this was 
not the only plan which might possibly be acceptable, 
and I also distinctly protested that the executive 
claimed no right to say when or whether members 
should be admitted to seats in Congress from such 
states. This plan was in advance submitted to the then 
cabinet, and distinctly approved by every member of 
it. One of them suggested that I should then in that 
connection apply the Emancipation Proclamation to 
the theretofore excepted parts of Virginia and 
Louisiana ; that I should drop the suggestion about 
apprenticeship for freed people, and that I should 
omit the protest against my own power in regard to 
the admission of members to Congress. But even 
he approved every part and parcel of the plan which 
has since been employed or touched by the action of 
Louisiana. 

The new constitution of Louisiana, declaring eman- 
cipation for the whole state, practically applies the 
proclamation to the part previously excepted. It does 
not adopt apprenticeship for freed people, and it is 

I A proclamation defining the terms upon which persons en- 
gaged in rebelHon might resume their allegiance to the United 
States. See Richardson's "Alessages and Papers of the Presi- 
dents," VI : 213 f. 



Addresses and State Papers 285 

silent. TiS it could not well be otherwise, about the ad- 
mission of members to Congress. So that, as it applies 
to Louisiana, every member of the cabinet fully ap- 
proved the plan. The message went to Congress, and 
I received many commendations of the plan, written 
and verbal, and not a single objection to it from any 
professed emancipationist came to my knowledge until 
after the news reached Washington that the people of 
Louisiana had begun to move in accordance with it. 
From about July, 1862, I had corresponded with differ- 
ent persons supposed to be interested [in] seeking a 
reconstruction of a state government for Louisiana. 
When the message of 1863, with the plan before men- 
tioned, reached New Orleans, General Banks wrote 
me that he was confident that the people, with his 
military cooperation, would reconstruct substantially 
on that plan. I wrote to him and some of them to try 
it. They tried it, and the result is known. Such has 
been my only agency in getting up the Louisiana gov- 
ernment. 

As to sustaining it, my promise is out, as before 
stated. But as bad promises are better broken than 
kept, I shall treat this as a bad promise, and break it 
whenever I shall be convinced that keeping it is adverse 
to public interest ; but I have not yet been so convinced. 
I have been shown a letter on this subject, svipposed to 
be an able one, in which the writer expresses regret 
that my mind has not seemed to be definitely fixed upon 
the question whether the seceded states, so called, are 
in the Union or out of it. It would perhaps add aston- 
ishment to his regret were he to learn that since I have 
found professed Union men endeavoring to make that 
question, I have purposely forborne any public c::pres- 
sion upon it. As appears to me, that question has not 
been, nor yet is, a practically material one, and that any 
discussion of it, while it thus remains practically im- 
material, could have no efifect other than the mischiev- 
ous one of dividing our friends. As yet, whatever it 
may hereafter become, that question is bad as the basis 



286 Appendix 

of a controversy, and good for nothing at all — a merely 
pernicious abstraction. 

We all agree that the seceded states, so called, are 
out of their proper practical relation with the Union, 
and that the sole object of the government, civil and 
military, in regard to those states, is to again get them 
into that proper practical relation. I believe that it is 
not only possible, but in fact easier, to do this without 
deciding or even considering whether these states have 
ever been out of the Union, than with it. Finding 
themselves safely at home, it would be utterly imma- 
terial whether they had ever been abroad. Let us all 
join in doing the acts necessary to restoring the proper 
practical relations between these states and the Union, 
and each forever after innocently indulge his own opm- 
ion whether in doing the acts he brought the states 
from without into the Union, or only gave them proper 
assistance, they never having been out of it. The 
amount of constituency, so to speak, on which the new 
Louisiana government rests, would be more satisfac- 
tory to all if it contained 50,000, or 30,000, or even 
20,000, instead of only about 12,000 as it does. It is 
also unsatisfactory to some that the elective franchise 
is not given to the colored man. I would myself prefer 
that it were now conferred on the very intelligent, and 
on those who serve our cause as soldiers. 

Still, the question is not whether the Louisiana gov- 
ernment, as it stands, is quite all that is desirable. The 
question is, will it be wiser to take it as it is and help 
to improve it, or to reject and disperse it? Can Loui- 
siana be brought into proper practical relation with the 
Union sooner by sustaining or by discarding her new 
state government? Some twelve thousand voters in 
the heretofore slave state of Louisiana have sworn 
allegiance to the Union, assumed to be the rightful 
political power of the state, held elections, organized 
a state government, adopted a free-state constitution, 
giving the benefit of public schools equally to black and 
white, and empowering the legislature to confer the 



Addresses and State Papers 287 

elective franchise upon the colored man. Their legis- 
lature has already voted to ratify the constitutional 
amendment recently passed by Congress, abolishing 
slavery throughout the nation. These twelve thousand 
persons are thus fully committed to the Union and to 
perpetual freedom in the state — committed to the very 
things, and nearly all the things, the nation wants — 
and they ask the nation's recognition and its assistance 
to make good their committal. 

Now, if we reject and spurn them, we do our utmost 
to disorganize and disperse them. We, in effect, say 
to the white man : You are worthless or worse ; we 
will neither help you, nor be helped by you. To the 
blacks, we say : This cup of liberty, which these, your 
old masters, hold to your lips, we will dash from you, 
and leave you to the chances of gathering the spilled 
and scattered contents in some vague and undefined 
when, where, and how. If this course, discouraging 
and paralyzing both white and black, has any tendency 
to bring Louisiana into proper, practical relations with 
the Union, I have so far been unable to perceive it. If, 
on the contrary, we recognize and sustain the new gov- 
ernment of Louisiana, the converse of all t^^is is made 
true. We encourage the hearts and nerve the arms of 
twelve thousand to adhere to their work, and argue for 
it, and proselyte for it, and fight for it, and feed it, and 
grow it, and ripen it to a complete success. The colored 
man, too, in seeing all united for him, is inspired with 
vigilance, and energ}-, and daring to the same end. 
Grant that he desires the elective franchise, will he 
not attain it sooner by saving the already advanced 
steps toward it than by running backward over them ? 
Concede that the new government of Louisiana is only 
to what it should be as the egg is to the fowl, we shall 
sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by 
smashing it. 

Again, if we reject Louisiana, we also reject one vote 
in favor of the proposed amendment to the national 
Constitution. To meet this proposition it has been 



288 Appendix 

argued that no more than three-fourths of those states 
which have not attempted secession are necessary to 
vahdly ratify the amendment. I do not commit myself 
against this further than to say that such a ratification 
would be questionable, and sure to be persistently ques- 
tioned, while a ratification by three-fourths of all the 
states would be unquestioned and unquestionable. I 
repeat the question : Can Louisiana be brought into 
proper practical relation with the Union sooner by sus- 
taining or by discarding her new state government? 
What has been said of Louisiana will apply generally 
to other states. And yet so great peculiarities pertain 
to each state, and such important and sudden changes 
occur in the same state, and withal so new and unpre- 
cedented is the whole case, that no exclusive and inflex- 
ible plan can safely be prescribed as to details and 
collaterals. Such exclusive and inflexible plan would 
surely become a new entanglement. Important prin- 
ciples may and must be inflexible. In the present situ- 
ation, as the phrase goes, it may be my duty to make 
some new announcement to the people of the South. 
I am considering, and shall not fail to act when satisfied 
that action will be proper. 



LETTERS 

Lincoln's Platform in 1836 

Lincoln was successful in his race for the legislature in 1834. 
He ran again in 1836, and published in the Sangamon Journal 
the following announcement and platform. He was one of 
the "Long Nine" members from his count}'. He favored the 
program of internal improvements encouraged by this legis- 
lature, as well as the removal of the state capital from Van- 
dalia to Springfield. His legislative addresses published in 
Nicolay and Hay reveal the possession of a remarkably good 
style and vocabularj-, together with abilit}' to cope with his 
opponents in debate. This announcement, which seems hur- 
riedly written, arrests attention for its endorsement of equal 
suffrage. Letter reprinted from Herndon, 1 : 166. See Rich- 
ards, pp. 101-103. 

New Salem, June 13, 1836. 

To THE Editor of the Journal : In your paper of 
last Saturday I see a communication, over the signature 
of "Many Voters," in which the candidates . . . an- 
nounced . . . are called upon to "show their hands." 
Agreed. Here's mine. 

I go for all sharing the privileges of the government 
who assist in bearing its burdens. Conseqitently, I go 
for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage who 
pay taxes or bear arms (by no means excluding 
females). 

If elected, I shall consider the whole people of San- 
gamon my constituents, as well those that oppose as 
those that support me. 

While acting as their representative, I shall be gov- 
erned by their will on all subjects upon which I have 
the means of knowing what their will is ; and upon all 
others, I shall do what my own judgment teaches me 
will best advance their interests. Whether elected or 

289 



290 Appendix 

not, I go for distributing the proceeds of the sales of 
the pubhc lands to the several states, to enable our 
state, in common with others, to dig canals and con- 
struct railroads without borrowing money and paying 
the interest on it. 

If alive on the first Monday in November, I shall 
vote for Hugh L. White for President. 
Very respectfully, 

A. Lincoln. 

Letter to Colonel Robert Allen. June 21, I836 

Dear Colonel : I am told that during my absence 
last week you passed through this place, and stated 
publicly that you were in possession of a fact or facts 
which, if known to the public, would entirely destroy 
the prospects of N. W. Edwards and myself at the 
ensuing election ; but that, through favor to us, you 
should forbear to divulge them. No one has needed 
favors more than I, and, generally, few have been less 
unwilling to accept them ; but in this case favor to me 
would be injustice to the public, and therefore I must 
beg your pardon for declining it. That I once had 
the confidence of the people of Sangamon is sufficiently 
evident ; and if I have since done anything, either by 
design or misadventure, which if known would subject 
me to a forfeiture of that confidence, he that knows of 
that thing, and conceals it, is a traitor to his country's 
interest. 

I find myself wholly unable to form any conjecture 
of what fact or facts, real or supposed, you spoke ; 
but my opinion of your veracity will not permit me for 
a moment to doubt that you at least believed what you 
said. I am flattered with the personal regard you mani- 
fested for me ; but I do hope that, on more mature 
reflection, you will view the public interest as a para- 
mount consideration, and therefore determine to let the 
worst come. I here assure you that the candid state- 
ment of facts on your part, however low it may sink 



Letters 291 

me, shall never break the tie of personal friendship 
between us. I wish an answer to this, and you are at 
liberty to publish both, if you choose. 

Letter to Mrs. O. H. Browning. Springfield, 
April i, 1838 

Dear Madam : Without apologizing for being ego- 
tistical, I shall make the history of so much of my life 
as has elapsed since I saw you the subject of this letter. 
And, by the way, I now discover that in order to give 
a full and intelligible account of the things I have done 
and suffered since I saw you, I shall necessarily have 
to relate some that happened before. 

It was, then, in the autunm of 1836 that a married 
lady of my acquaintance, and who was a great friend 
of mine, being about to pay a visit to her father and 
other relatives residing in Kentucky, proj^osed to me 
that on her return she would bring a sister of hers with 
her on condition that I would engage to become her 
brother-in-law with all convenient dispatch. I, of 
course, accepted the proposal, for you know I could 
not have done otherwise had I really been averse to it ; 
but privately, between you and me, I was most con- 
foundedly well pleased with the project. I had seen 
the said sister some three years before, thought her 
intelligent and agreeable, and saw no good objection to 
plodding life through hand-in-hand with her. Time 
passed on, the lady took her journey, and in due time 
returned, sister in company, sure enough. This aston- 
ished me a little, for it appeared to me that her coming 
so readily showed that she was a trifle too willing, but 
on reflection it occurred to me that she might have been 
prevailed on by her married sister to come, without 
anything concerning me having been mentioned to her, 
and so I concluded that if no other objection presented 
itself, I would consent to waive this. All this occurred 
to me on hearing of her arrival in the neighborhood — 
for, be it remembered, I had not yet seen her, except 



292 Appendix 

about three years previous, as above mentioned. In a 
few days we had an interview, and, although I had seen 
her before, she did not look as my imagination had 
pictured her. I knew she was over-size, but she now 
appeared a fair match for Falstaff. I knew she was 
called an "old maid," and I felt no doubt of the truth 
of at least half of the appellation, but now, when I 
beheld her, 1 could not for my life avoid thinking of 
my mother ; and this, not from withered features, — 
for her skin was too full of fat to permit of its con- 
tracting into wrinkles — but from her want of teeth, 
weather-beaten appearance in general, and from a kind 
of notion that ran in my head that nothing could have 
commenced at the size of infancy and reached her 
present bulk in less than thirty-five or forty years ; 
and, in short, I was not at all pleased with her. But 
what could I do? I had told her sister that I would 
take her for better or for worse, and I made a point of 
honor and conscience in all things to stick to my word, 
especially if others had been induced to act on it, which 
in this case I had no doubt they had, for I was now 
fairly convinced that no other man on earth would 
have her, and hence the conclusion that they were bent 
on holding me to my bargain. "Well," thought I, "I 
have said it, and, be the consequences what they may. 
it shall not be my fault if I fail to do it." At once I 
determined to consider her my wife, and this done, all 
my powers of discovery were put to work in search of 
perfections in her which might be fairly set off against 
her defects. I tried to imagine her handsome, which, 
but for her unfortunate corpulency, was actually true. 
Exclusive of this, no woman that I have ever seen has 
a finer face. I also tried to convince myself that the 
mind was much more to be valued than the person, and 
in this she was not inferior, as I could discover, to any 
with whom I had been acquainted. 

Shortly after this, without attempting to come to any 
positive understanding with her, I set out for Vandalia, 
when and where you first saw me. During my stay 



Letters 293 

there I had letters from her which did not change my 
opinion of either her intellect or intention, but, on the 
contrary, confirmed it in both. 

All this while, although I was fixed "firm as the 
surge-repelling rock" in my resolution, I found I was 
continually repenting the rashness which had led me to 
make it. Through life I had been in no bondage, 
either real or imaginary, from the thraldom of which 
I so nuich desired to be free. After my return home 
I saw nothing to change my opinion of her in any par- 
ticular. She was the same, and so was I. I now spent 
my time in planning how I might get along in life after 
my contemplated change of circumstances should have 
taken place, and how I might procrastinate the evil 
day for a time, which I really dreaded as much, per- 
haps more, than an Irishman does the halter. 

After all my sufl^erings upon this deeply interesting 
subject, here I am, wholly, unexpectedly, coinpletely 
out of the "scrape," and I now want to know if you 
can guess how I got out of it — out, clear, in every sense 
of the term — no violation of word, honor, or con- 
science. I don't believe you can guess, and so I might 
as well tell you at once. As the lawyer says, it was 
done in the manner following, to wit : After I had 
delayed the matter as long as I thought I could in 
honor do ( which, by the way, had brought me round 
into the last fall), I concluded I might as well bring it 
to a consummation without further delay, and so I 
mustered my resolution and made the proposal to her 
direct ; but, shocking to relate, she answered, No. At 
first I supposed she did it through an afifectation of 
modesty, which I thought but ill became her under the 
peculiar circumstances of the case, but on my renewal 
of the charge I found she repelled it with greater firm- 
ness than before. I tried it again and again, but with 
the same success, or rather with the same want of 
success. 

I finally was forced to give it up, at which I very 
unexpectedly found myself mortified almost beyond 



294 Appendix 

endurance. I was mortified, it seemed to me, in a hun- 
dred different ways. My vanity was deeply wounded 
by the reflection that I had so long been too stupid to 
discover her intentions, and at the same time never 
doubting that I understood them perfectly ; and also 
that she, whom I had taught myself to believe nobody 
else would have, had actually rejected me with all my 
fancied greatness. And, to cap the whole, I then for 
the first time began to suspect that I was really a little 
in love with her. But let it all go ! I'll try and outlive 
it. Others have been made fools of by the girls, but 
this can never in truth be said of me. I most emphat- 
ically, in this instance, made a fool of myself. I have 
now come to the conclusion never again to think of 
marrying, and for this reason — I can never be satisfied 
with any one who would be blockhead enough to have 
me. 

When you receive this, write me a long yarn about 
something to amuse me. Give my respects to Mr. 
Browning. 

From a Letter to William H. Herndon. Wash- 
ington, January 8. 1848 

Lincoln was elected to Congress in 1846, as a Whig, where 
he formed a friendship with Alexander H. Stephens, of 
Georgia, afterward Vice-President of the Confederacy. Lin- 
coln's congressional speeches show that he was "getting the 
hang of the House." They are published in Nicolay and Hay. 

Dear William : Your letter of December 27th was 
received a day or two ago. I am much obliged to you 
for the trouble you have taken, and promise to take in 
my little business there. As to speech-making, by way 
of getting the hang of the House, I made a little speech 
two or three days ago on a post-office question of no 
general interest. I find speaking here and elsewhere 
about the same thing. I was about as badly scared, 
and no worse, as I am when I speak in court. I expect 
to make one within a week or two, in which I hope 
to succeed well enough to wish you to see it. 



Letters 295 

It is very pleasant to learn from you that there are 
some who desire that I should be re-elected. I most 
heartily thank them for their partiality ; and I can say, 
as Mr. Clay said of the annexation of Texas, that 
"personally I would not object" to a re-election, al- 
though I thought at the time, and still think, it would 
be quite as well for me to return to the law at the end 
pf a single term. I made the declaration that I would 
not be a candidate again, more from a wish to deal 
fairly with others, to keep peace among our friends, 
and to keep the district from going to the enemy, than 
for any cause personal to myself ; so that, if it should 
so happen that nobody else v/ishes to be elected. I 
could refuse the people the right of sending me again. 
But to enter myself as a competitor of others, or to 
authorize any one so to enter me, is what my word 
and honor forbid. . . . 

From a Letter to William H. Herndon. Wash- 
ington, June 22, 1848 

This letter illustrates Lincoln's interest in young men in (he 
making, and affords evidence of his natural shrewdness as a 
political manager. He had a habit of adapting his style to his 
purpose, ranging from the homespun to the ornate, as the 
occasion suggested. Lincoln was now thirt}-nine years of age. 

As TO the young men. You must not wait to be 
brought forward by the older men. For instance, do 
you suppose that I should ever have got into notice if 
I had waited to be hunted up and pushed forward by 
older men? You young men get together and forni a 
"Rough and Ready Club," and have regular meetings 
and speeches. Take in everybody you can get. Har- 
rison Grimsley, L. A. Enos, Lee Kimball, and C. W. 
Matheny will do to begin the thing ; but as you go along 
gather up all the shrewd, wild boys about town, 
whether just of age or a little under age.— Chris. 
Logan. Reddick Ridgley. Lewis Zwizler. and hundreds 
such. Let every one play the part he can play best, — 



296 Appendix 

some speak, some sing, and all "holler." Your meet- 
ings will be of evenings ; the older men, and the women, 
will go to hear you ; so that it will not only contribute 
to the election of "Old Zach." but will be an interesting 
pastime, and improving to the intellectual faculties of 
all engaged. Don't fail to do this. 

Letter to John D. Johnston. January 2, 1851. 

Lincoln's two letters to his stepmother's son, who had come 
from Indiana with the Lincoln family, exhibit a Yankee sense 
of thrift, great common sense, and a spirit of kindliness in 
giving advice. 

Dear Johnston : Your request for eighty dollars 
I do not think it best to comply with now. At the 
various times when I have helped you a little, you have 
said to me, "We can get along very well now" ; but in 
a very short time I find you in the same difficulty again. 
Now, this can only happen by some defect in your con- 
duct. What that defect is, I think I know. You are 
not lazy, and still you are an idler. I doubt whether, 
since I saw you, you have done a good whole day's 
work in any one day. You do not very much dislike 
to work, and still you do not work much, merely be- 
cause it does not seem to you that you could get much 
for it. This habit of uselessly wasting time is the 
whole difficulty ; it is vastly important to you. and still 
more so to your children, that you should break the 
habit. It is more important to them, because they 
have longer to live, and can keep out of an idle habit 
before they are in it, easier than they can get out after 
they are in. 

You are now in need of some money ; and what I 
propose is, that you shall go to work, "tooth and nail," 
for somebody who will give you money for it. Let 
father and your boys take charge of your things at 
home, prepare for a crop, and make the crop, and you 
go to work for the best money wages, or in discharge 
of any debt you owe, that you can get ; and. to secure 



I 



Letters 297 

you a fair reward for your labor, I now i)romise you, 
that for every dollar you will, between tbis and the 
first of May, get for your own labor, either in money or 
as your own indebtedness, I will then give you one 
other dollar. By this, if you hire yourself at ten dollars 
a month, from me you will get ten more, making twenty 
dollars a month for your work. In this I do not mean 
you shall go off to St. Louis, or the lead mines, or the 
gold mines in California, but I mean for you to go at 
it for the best wages you can get close to home in Coles 
County. Now, if you will do this, you will be soon out 
of debt, and, what is better, you will have a habit that 
will keep you from getting in debt again. But, if I 
should now clear you out of debt, next year you would 
be just as deep in as ever. You say you would almost 
give your place in heaven for seventy or eighty dollars. 
Then you value your place in heaven very cheap, for 
I am sure you can, with the offer I make, get the sev- 
enty or eighty dollars for four or five months' work. 
You say if I will furnish you the money you will deed 
me the land, and, if you don't pay the money back, 
you will deliver possession. Nonsense! If you can't 
now live with the land, how will you then live without 
it? You have always been kind to me, and I do not 
mean to be unkind to you. On the contrary, if you 
will but follow my advice, you will find it worth more 
than eighty times eighty dollars to you. 

Letter to John D. Johnston. Shelbyville, 
November 4. 1851 

Dear Brother : When I came into Charleston day 
before yesterday, I learned that you are anxious to sell 
the land where you live and move to Missouri. I have 
been thinking of this ever since, and cannot but think 
such a notion is utterly foolish. What can you do in 
Missouri better than here? Is the land any richer? 
Can you there, any more than here, raise corn and 
wheat and oats without work? Will anybody there, 



298 Appendix 

any more than here, do your work for you? If you 
intend to go to work, there is no better place than right 
where you are ; if you do not intend to go to work, you 
cannot get along anywhere. Squirming and crawling 
about from place to place can do no good. You have 
raised no crop this year ; and what you really want is 
to sell the land, get the money, and spend it. Part 
with the land you have, and, my life upon it, you will 
never after own a spot big enough to bury you in. 
Half you will get for the land you will spend in moving 
to Missouri, and the other half you will eat, drink, and 
wear out, and no foot of land will be bought. Now, 
I feel it my duty to have no hand in such a piece of 
foolery. I feel that it is so even on your own account, 
and particularly on mother's account. The eastern 
forty acres I intend to keep for mother while she lives ; 
if you will not cultivate it, it will rent for enough to 
support her — at least, it will rent for something. Her 
dower in the other two forties she can let you have, 
and no thanks to me. Now, do not misunderstand this 
letter ; I do not write it in any unkindness. I write it 
in order, if possible, to get you to face the truth, which 
truth is, you are destitute because you have idled away 
all your time. Your thousand pretences for not get- 
ting along better are all nonsense ; they deceive nobody 
but yourself. Go to work is the only cure for your 
case. 

A word to mother. Chapman tells me he wants you 
to go and live with him. If I were you I would try it 
awhile, li you get tired of it (as I think you will not), 
you can return to your own home. Chapman feels 
very kindly to you, and I have no doubt he will make 
your situation very pleasant. 

From a Letter to George Robertson. Springfield, 
August 15, 1855 

Lincoln's Peoria speech marks his mastery of the funda- 
mental national policy which enabled him to oppose Douglas's 
arguments in 1858. This letter to George Robertson, a jurist, 



I 



Letters 299 

congressman and slavery advocate, living in Lexington, Ken- 
tucky, contains the thought afterwards developed in the 
famous first paragraph of the "House Divided" speech. This 
and the following letter to Joshua F. Speed, at one time gov- 
ernor of the Kansas territory, supplement the Peoria speech, 
and show that Lincoln had already reached the point of public 
and uncompromising hostility to the extension of slavery. 

My dear Sir: You are not a friend of slavery in 
the abstract. In that speech you spoke of "the peace- 
ful extinction of slavery" and used other expressions 
indicating your belief that the thing was, at some time, 
to have an end. Since then we have had thirty-six 
years of experience ; and this experience has demon- 
strated, I think, that there is no peaceful extinction of 
slavery in prospect for us. The signal failure of 
Henry Clay and other good and great men, in 1849, to 
eft'ect anything in favor of gradual emancipation in 
Kentucky, together with a thousand other signs, ex- 
tinguished that hope utterly. On the question of lib- 
erty, as a principle, we are not what we have been. 
When we were the political slaves of King George, 
and wanted to be free, we called the maxim that "all 
men are created equal" a self-evident truth, but now 
when we have grown fat, and have lost all dread of 
being slaves ourselves, we have become so greedy to be 
masters that we call the same maxim "a self-evident 
lie." The Fourth of July has not quite dwindled away ; 
it is still a great day — for burning fire-crackers ! 

That spirit which desired the peaceful extinction of 
slavery has itself become extinct with the occasion and 
the men of the Revolution. Under the impulse of that 
occasion, nearly half the states adopted systems of 
emancipation at once, and it is a significant fact that 
not a single state has done the like since. So far as 
peaceful, voluntary emancipation is concerned, the con- 
dition of the negro slave in America, scarcely less 
terrible to the contemplation of a free mind, is now as 
fixed and hopeless of change for the better as that of 
the lost souls of the finally impenitent. The Autocrat 
of all the Russias will resign his crown and T)roclaim 



300 Appendix 

his subjects free republicans, sooner than will our 
American masters voluntarily give up their slaves. 

Our political problem now is, "Can we as a nation 
continue together permanently — forever — half slave 
and half free?" The problem is too mighty for me — 
may God in his mercy superintend the solution. 

Your much obliged friend, and humble servant, 

A. Lincoln. 

From a Letter to Joshua F. Speed. Springfield, 
August 24, 1855 

Dear Speed : You know what a poor correspondent 
I am. Ever since I received your very agreeable letter 
of the 22d of May I have been intending to write you 
an answer to it. You suggest that in political action 
now, you and I would ditTer. I suppose we would ; 
not quite so much, however, as you may think. You 
know I dislike slavery, and you fully admit the ab- 
stract wrong of it. So far there is no cause of differ- 
ence. But you say that sooner than yield your legal 
right to the slave, especially at the bidding of those 
who are not themselves interested, you would see the 
Union dissolved. I am not aware that any one is bid- 
ding you yield that right ; very certainly I am not. I 
leave that matter entirely to yourself. I also acknowl- 
edge your rights and my obligations under the Consti- 
tution in regard to your slaves. I confess I hate to see 
the poor creatures hunted down and caught and car- 
ried back to their stripes and unrequited toil ; but I 
bite my lips and keep quiet. In 1841, you and I had 
together a tedious low-water trip on a steamboat, from 
Louisville to St. Louis. You ma}' remember, as I well 
do, that from Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio, 
there were on board ten or a dozen slaves shackled to- 
gether with irons. That sight was a continued tor- 
ment to me, and I see something like it every time I 
touch the Ohio or any other slave border. It is not 
fair for you to assume that I have no interest in a thing 



Letters 301 

which has, and continually exercises, the power of 
niakin,<,r me miserable, ^'(ju ought rather to appreciate 
how much the great hod}- of the Northern people do 
crucify their feelings in order to maintain their loyalty 
to the Constitution and the Union. I do oppose the 
extension of slavery, because my judgment and feeling 
so prompt me, and I am under no obligations to the 
contrary. If for this you and I must differ, differ we 
must. You say if you were President, you would send 
an army and hang the leaders of the Missouri outrages 
upon the Kansas elections; still, if Kansas fairly votes 
herself a slave state she must be admitted, or the Union 
must be dissolved. But how if she votes herself a 
slave state unfairly ; that is, by the very means for 
which you say yott would hang men? Must she still 
be admitted, or the Union dissolved? That will be- 
the phase of the question when it first becomes a prac- 
tical one. In your assumption that there may be a fair 
decision of the slavery question in Kansas, I plainly 
see that you and I would differ about the Nebraska 
law. I look upon that enactment, not as a law, but as 
a violence from the beginning. It was conceived in 
violence, is maintained in violence, and is being exe- 
cuted in violence. I say it was conceived in violence, 
because the destruction of the Missouri Compromise, 
under the circumstances, was nothing less than vio- 
lence. It was passed in violence, because it could not 
have passed at all but for the votes of many members 
in violence of the known will of their constituents. It 
is maintained in violence, because the elections since 
clearly demand its repeal, and the demand is openly 
disregarded. 

You say men ought to be hung for the way they are 
executing the law ; I say that the way it is being exe- 
cuted is quite as good as any of its antecedents. It is 
being executed in the precise way which was intended 
from the first, else why does no Nebraska man express 
astonishment or condemnation? Poor Reeder is the 
only public man who has been silly enough to believe 



302 Appendix 

that anything like fairness was ever intended, and he 
has been bravely undeceived. 

That Kansas will form a slave constitution, and with 
it will ask to be admitted into the Union, I take to be 
already a settled question, and so settled by the very 
means you so pointedly condemn. By every principle 
of law ever held by any court North or South, every 
negro taken to Kansas is free ; yet in utter disregard of 
this, — in the spirit of violence merely, — that beautiful 
legislature gravely passes a law to hang any man who 
shall venture to inform a negro of his legal rights. 
This is the subject and real object of the law. If, like 
Haman, they should hang upon the gallows of their 
own building, I shall not be among the mourners for 
their fate. In my humble sphere, I shall advocate the 
restoration of the Missouri Compromise so long as 
Kansas remains a territory, and when, by all these 
fotil means, it seeks to come into the Union as a slave 
state, I shall oppose it. I am very loath in any case 
to withhold my assent to the enjoyment of property 
acquired or located in good faith ; but I do not admit 
that good faith in taking a negro to Kansas to be held 
in slavery is a probability with any man. Any man 
who has sense enough to be the controller of his own 
property has too much sense to misunderstand the 
outrageous character of the whole Nebraska business. 
But I digress. In my opposition to the admission of 
Kansas, I shall have some company, but we may be 
beaten. If we are, I shall not, on that account, attempt 
to dissolve the Union. I think it probable, however, 
we shall be beaten. Standing as a unit among your- 
selves, you can, directly and indirectly, bribe enough 
of our men to carry the day, as you could on the open 
proposition to establish a monarchy. Get hold of some 
man in the North whose position and ability are such 
that he can make the support of your measure, what- 
ever it may be, a Democratic-party necessity, and the 
thing is done. Apropos of this, let me tell you an anec- 
dote. Douglas introduced the Nebraska bill in Janu- 



Letters 303 

ary. In February afterward, there was a called 
session of the Illinois legislature. Of the one hundred 
members composing the two branches of that body, 
about seventy were Democrats. These latter held a 
caucus, in which the Nebraska bill was talked of. if 
not formally discussed. It was thereby discovered that 
just three, and no more, were in favor of the measure. 
In a day or two Douglas's orders came on to have 
resolutions passed approving the bill ; and they were 
passed by large majorities ! ! ! The truth of this is 
vouched for by a bolting Democratic member. 

Letter to J. M. Bkockman. September 25. i860 

Dear Sir: Yours of the 24th. asking "the best 
mode of obtaining a thorough knowledge of the law," 
is received. The mode is very simple, though labori- 
ous and tedious. It is only to get the books and read 
and study them carefully. Begin with Blackstone's 
"Commentaries," and after reading it carefully 
through, say twice, take up Chitty's "Pleadings." 
Greenleaf's "Evidence," and Story's "Equity," etc., in 
succession. Work, work, work, is the main thing. 
Yours very truly, 

A. Lincoln. 

Letter to Colonel Ellsworth's Parents. Wash- 
ington, May 25, I861 

Colonel E, E. Ellsworth (1837-1861) had read law in Lin- 
coln's office, had been a leader of Zouaves during the Presi- 
dential campaign of i860, and had accompanied the inaugural 
party to Washington. He commanded the Federal troops 
which entered Alexandria in May. and was shot liy a hotel 
keeper there, over whose house floated a Confederate flag, 
which the brave young Colonel tore down with his own hands. 
It is interesting to compare this letter of condolence with 
Lincoln's similar letters to Miss Fanny McCullough, Decem- 
ber 23, 1863, and the letter to Mrs. Bixby, November 21, 1864. 

My dear Sir and Madam : In the imtimely loss of 
vour noble son, our affliction is scarcely less than vour 



304 Appendix 

own. So much of promised usefulness to one's coun- 
try, and of bright hopes for one's self and friends, 
have rarely been so suddenly dashed as in his fall. In 
size, in years, and in youthful appearance a boy only, 
his power to command men was surpassingly great. 
This power, combined with a fine intellect, an indom- 
itable energy, and a taste altogether military, consti- 
tuted in him, as seemed to me, the best natural talent 
in that department I ever knew. 

And yet he was singvilarly modest and deferential 
in social intercourse. My acquaintance with him began 
less than two years ago ; yet through the latter half of 
the intervening period it was as intimate as the dis- 
parity of our ages and my engrossing engagements 
would permit. To me he appeared to have no indul- 
gences or pastimes ; and I never heard him utter a 
profane or an intemperate word. What was conclu- 
sive of his good heart, he never forgot his parents. 
The honors he labored for so laudably, and for which 
in the sad end he so gallantly gave his life, he meant 
for them no less than for himself. 

In the hope that it may be no intrusion upon the 
sacredness of your sorrow, I have ventured to address 
you this tribute to the memory of my young friend and 
your brave and early fallen child. 

May God give you that consolation which is beyond 
all earthly power. 

Sincerely your friend in a common affliction, 

A. Lincoln. 

Letter to Horace Greeley. Washington. 
August 22, 1862 

On August ig, Horace Greeley printed in the Neiv York 
Tribune an editorial under the heading, "The Prayer of 
Twenty Millions," in which he entreated the President "to 
render hearty and unequivocal obedience to the laws of the 
land !" A similar editorial was published on the following 
day. Greeley, radical and erratic, felt with those of his 
class that emancipation preceded the preservation of the 
Union in importance, and he intimated that Lincoln was 



Letters 305 

under the influence of the slave power. Lincohi's coolly 
rational reply was a masterpiece of direct statement of pur- 
l)ose and policy, as condensed as it was inclusive. 

Dear Sir: I have just read yours of the 19th in- 
stant, addressed to myself through the Netv York 
Tribune. If there be in it any statements or assump- 
tions of fact which I may know to be erroneous. I do 
not now and here controvert them. Tf there be in it 
any inferences which 1 may beUeve to be falsely drawn, 
I do not now and here argue against them. If there 
be perceptible in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, 
I waive it, in deference to an old friend whose heart 
I have always supposed to be right. 

As to the policy I "seem to be pursuing," as you say, 
I have not meant to leave any one in doubt. 

I would save the Union. I would save it in the 
shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the 
national authority can be 'restored, the nearer the 
Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be 
those who would not save the Union unless they could 
at the same time save slavery. I do not agree with 
them. If there be those who would not save the Union 
unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I 
do not agree with them. My paramount object in this 
struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save 
or to destroy slavery. If 1 could save the Union with- 
out freeing any slave, I would do it ; if I could save it 
by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could 
save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I 
would also do that. What I do about slavery and the 
colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save 
the Union ; and what I forbear, I forbear because I 
do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall 
do less whenever I shall believe that what I am doing 
hurts the cause ; and I shall do more whenever I shall 
believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to 
correct errors when shown to be errors, and I shall 
adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true 
views. 



306 Appendix 

I have here stated my purpose according to my view 
of official duty, and I intend no modification of my 
oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere 
could be free. Yours, 

A. Lincoln. 

From a Letter to General G. B. McClellan. 
Washington, February 3, 1862 

The President and General McClellan held dififerent views 
with reference to the advance upon Richmond. The general 
desired to move his troops by water to Fort Monroe and 
thence up the peninsula to Richmond; Lincoln believed the 
army should march overland, but yielded the point. The let- 
ter which follows illustrates Lincoln's way of reasoning both 
sides of a question to find on which side lay the balance of 
probabilities. McClellan's continued delay led the President 
to remark later that the Army of the Potomac served only as 
McClellan's bodyguard, and that if McClellan did not intend 
to use the army, he should like to borrow it for a while. 

My dear Sir: You. and I have distinct and differ- 
ent plans for a movement of the Army of the Potomac 
— yours to be down the Chesapeake, up the Rappa- 
hannock to Urbana and across land to the terminus of 
the railroad on the York River ; mine to move directly 
to a point on the railroad southwest of Manassas. 

If you will give me satisfactory answers to the fol- 
lowing questions, I shall gladly yield my plan to yours. 

First. Does not your plan involve a greatly larger 
expenditure of time and money than mine? 

Second. Wherein is victory more certain by your 
plan than mine? 

Third. Wherein is a victory more valuable by your 
plan than mine? 

Fourth. In fact, would it not be less valuable in 
this, that it would break no great line of the enemy's 
communications, while mine would ? 

Fifth. In case of disaster, would not a retreat be 
more difficult by ^ our plan than mine ? 



Letters 307 



From a Letter to Cutiibert Bullitt. ]\j\.\ 28, 1862 

This is a discussion b\- the President of the hikewarm atti- 
tude of the professed Union men in Louisiana who complained 
of the presence of Federal restrictions in that State. These 
men were merely complaining" of the inconvenience they felt. 
Thej' maintained that they were in the majority, yet the Presi- 
dent shows clearly that, admitting this, it was inconceivable 
why they were so inactive in behalf of the Union. The pith 
of his letter, which follows, presents his view of the best 
method of findin.^' relief from the troubles of which they com- 
))lained. The close of the letter suggests the temper of the 
close of the great Second Inaugural, of 1865. 

Now, I think the true remedy is very different from 
that suggested by Mr. Durant. It does not he in 
rounding the rough angles of the war, but in removing 
the necessity for the war. The people of Louisiana 
who wish protection to person and property, have but 
to reach forth their hands and take it. Let them in 
good faith reinaugurate the national authority, and 
set up a .State government conforming thereto under 
the Constitution. They know how to do it, and can 
have the protection of the army while doing it. The 
army will be withdrawn as soon as such government 
can dispense with its presence, and the people of the 
State can then, upon the old constitutional terms, 
govern themselves to their own liking. This is very 
simple and easy. 

If they will not do this, if they prefer to hazard all 
for the sake of destroying the government, it is for 
them to consider whether it is probable that I will 
surrender the government to save them from losing 
all. If they decline what I suggest, you will scarcely 
need to ask what I will do. 

What would you do in my position? Would you 
drop the war where it is, or would you prosecute it in 
future with elder-stalk squirts charged with rose- 
water? W^ould you deal lighter blows rather than 
heavier ones ? \A'ould you give up the contest, leaving 
any available means untried? 



308 Appendix 

I am in no boastful mood. I shall not do more than 
I can ; but I shall do all 1 can to save the government, 
which is my sworn duty as well as my personal incli- 
nation. I shall do nothing in malice. What I deal 
with is too vast for malicious dealing. 

Letter to Miss Fanxv jMcCullough. 
DecEiMber 2^, 1862 

Lincoln's letters of condolence exhibit heartfelt sympathy 
in a language equally frank and refined. Similar examples 
are the letters to Colonel Ellsworth's parents and to Airs. 
Bixby. 

Dear Faxny: It is with deep regret that I learn of 
the death of your kind and brave father, and especially 
that it is affecting your young heart beyond what is 
common in such cases. In this sad world of ours, sor- 
row comes to all, and to the young it comes with 
bittered agony because it takes them unawares. The 
older have learned ever to expect it. I am anxious to 
afford some alleviation of your present distress. Per- 
fect relief is not possible except with time. You can- 
not now realize that you will ever feel better. Is not 
this so? And yet it is a mistake. You are sure to be 
happy again. To know this, which is certainly true, 
will make you some less miserable now. I have had 
experience enough to know what I say, and you need 
only to believe it to feel better at once. The memory 
of your dear father, instead of an agony, will yet be 
a sad, sweet feeling in your heart, of a purer and holier 
sort than you have known before. 

Please present my kind regards to your afflicted 
mother. Your sincere friend, 

A. Lincoln. 

Letter to the Workingmen of Manchester. 
Wash I Nc.TO.x, January 19. 1863 

President Lincoln's blockade of the southern ports at the 
outset of the Civil War was followed b}- a very severe cotton 
famine in England, which threw out of employment thousands 



Letters 309 

of operatives in the factories of Lancashire. Relief societies 
in England raised nearly $15,000,000 for their assistance. At 
one time abont 250.000 persons were the recipients of benefit. 
Had the workingmen brought pressure upon their government, 
"it must have turned the scale irresistibly ; yet the workingmen 
chose to endure a long period of terrible privation rather than 
demand an intervention which must have given a renewed 
lease of life to the institution of slavery. The whole episode 
redounds to tlie national honor of England and most of all to 
that of tlie British workingman." On New Year's eve six thou- 
sand workmen held a meeting in Manchester to celebrate 
President Lincoln's emancipation of the American slaves, and 
sent resolutions of approval. John Bright, friend of America, 
wrote Charles Sumner that he thought that "in every town in 
the kingdom, a public meeting would go by an overwhelming 
majority in favor of President Lincoln and the North." This 
year, 1863, Henry Ward Beecher made many addresses to the 
workingmen of England and Scotland in explanation of tlie 
issues between the North and the South. These remarkable 
addresses are interesting reading and maj' be found in most 
public libraries. Lincoln's reply to the Manchester workingmen 
is so elevated in thought and language and so appreciative of 
the attitude of those to whom he wrote, that it sounds like a 
prophecy of the spiritual alliance in reality existing between 
the two great English-speaking nations in behalf of the high 
ideals for which the better sentiment of both stand. 

To THE A\'(>KKixGMi;x (IF ^Manchester: I have 
the honor to acknowledge the receipt of the address 
and resolutions which you sent me on the eve of the 
new year. When I came, on the 4th of March, 1861, 
through a free and constitutional election to preside in 
the government of the United States, the country was 
found at the verge of civil war. Whatever might have 
been the cause, or whosesoever the fault, one duty, 
paramount to all others, was before me, namely, to 
maintain and preserve at once the Constitution and 
the integrity of the federal reptiblic. A conscientious 
purpose to perform this duty is the key to all the meas- 
ures of administration which have been and to all 
which will hereafter be pursued. Under our fraine of 
government and my official oath, I could not depart 
from this purpose if 1 would. It is not always in the 
power of governments to enlarge or restrict the scope 



310 Appendix 

of moral results which follow the policies that they 
ma}' deem it necessary for the public safety from time 
to time to adopt. 

I have understood well that the duty of self-preser- 
vation rests solely with the American people ; but I 
have at the same time been aware that favor or dis- 
favor of foreign nations might have a material influ- 
ence in enlarging or prolonging the struggle with dis- 
loyal men in which the country is engaged. A fair 
examination of history has served to authorize a belief 
that the past actions and influences of the United 
States were generally regarded as having been bene- 
ficial toward mankind. I have, therefore, reckoned 
upon the forbearance of nations. Circumstances — to 
some of which you kindly allude — induce me especially 
to expect that if justice and good faith should be prac- 
ticed by the United States, they would encounter no 
hostile influence on the part of Great Britain. It is 
now a pleasant duty to acknowledge the demonstration 
you have given of your desire that a spirit of amity 
and peace toward this country may prevail in the 
councils of your Queen, who is respected and esteemed 
in your own country only more than she is by the km- 
dred nation which has its home on this side of the 
Atlantic. 

I know and deeply deplore the sufferings which the 
workingmen at Manchester, and in all Europe, are 
called to endure in this crisis. It has been often and 
studiously represented that the attempt to overthrow 
this government, which was built upon the foundation 
of human rights, and to substitute for it one which 
should rest exclusively on the basis of human slavery, 
was likely to obtain the favor of Europe. Through 
the action of our disloyal citizens, the workingmen of 
Europe have been subjected to severe trials, for the 
purpose of forcing their sanction to that attempt. 
Under the circumstances, I cannot but regard your 
decisive utterances u]:)on the question as an instance of 
sublime Christian heroism which has not been sur- 



Letters 311 

passed in any age or in any connlry. It is indeed an 
energetic and reinspiring assurance of the inherent 
power of truth, and of the uhiniate and universal 
triunii)h of justice, Imnianity, and freedom. I do not 
doubt that the sentiments you have expressed will be 
sustained by your great nation ; and, on the other hand, 
I have no hesitation in assuring you that they will 
excite admiration, esteem, and the most reciprocal 
feelings of friendship among the American people. I 
hail this interchange of sentiment, therefore, as an 
augury that whatever else may happen, whatever mis- 
fortunes may befall your country or my own, the peace 
and friendship which now exist between the two na- 
tions will be, as it shall be my desire to make them, 
perpetual. Abraham Lincoln. 

Letter to General Hooker. Washington, Janu- 
ary 26, 1863 

Lincoln's search for a successful general to head the east- 
ern armies had met with ill success. In appointing Hooker 
to the chief command, the President disregarded formality 
and counseled him freely, yet very succincth', upon his de- 
fects and his virtues as a general, and revealed to him the 
unfavorable spirit in the army for which he must assume 
his share of personal responsibility. In a single paragraph, 
the President epitomized the military situation confronting 
the appointee, the qualities essential to army leadershi]). and 
the great need of the nation at the hour — freedom from rash- 
ness, energy, and victories. In his "History of the Civil War" 
(1917), pp. 207-211, Rhodes gives a brief and clear .statement 
of Lincoln's problem in reference to a general for the Army 
of the Potomac, together with a historic estimate of the men 
immediately available for the place when Hooker received 
the appointment. 

General: I have placed you at the head of the 
Army of the Potomac. Of course I have done this 
upon what appear to me to be sufficient reasons, and 
yet I think it best for you to know that there are some 
things in regard to which I am not quite satisfied with 
you. I believe you to be a brave and skillful soldier, 



312 Appendix 

which of course I like. I also believe you do not mix 
politics with your profession, in which you are right. 
You have confidence in yourself, which is a valuable 
if not an indispensable quality. You are ambitious, 
which, within reasonable bounds, does good rather than 
harm ; but I think that during General Burnside's com- 
mand of the army you have taken counsel of your 
ambition and thwarted him as much as you could, in 
which you did a great wrong to the country and to a 
most meritorious and honorable brother officer. I 
have heard, in such a way as to believe it, of your 
recently saying that both the army and the government 
needed a dictator. Of course it was not for this, but 
in spite of it, that I have given you the command. Only 
those generals who gain successes can set up dictators. 
What I now ask of you is military success, and I will 
risk the dictatorship. The government will support 
you to the utmost of its ability, which is neither more 
nor less than it has done and will do for all com- 
manders. I much fear that the spirit which you have 
aided to infuse into the army, of criticising their com- 
mander and withholding confidence from him, will now 
turn upon you. I shall assist you as far as I can to 
put it down. Neither you nor Napoleon, if he were 
alive again, could get any good out of an army while 
such a spirit prevails in it ; and now beware of rash- 
ness. Beware of rashness, but with energy and sleep- 
less vigilance go forward and give us victories. 

Yours very truly, 

A. Lincoln. 

Letter to General Grant. Washington. 
July 13, 1863 

My dear General : I do not remember that you 
and I ever met personally. I write this now as a 
grateful acknowledgment for the almost inestimable 
service you have done the country. I wish to say a 
word further. When you first reached the vicinity of 



Letters 313 

Vicksburc^. T thought you should do what you Ihiall}- 
did — march the troops across the neck, run the batteries 
with the transports, and thus go below ; and I never 
had any faith, except a general hope that you knew 
better than I, that the Yazoo Pass expedition and the 
like could succeed. When you got below and took 
Port Gibson, Grand Gulf, and vicinity, I thought you 
should go down the river and join General Banks, and 
when you turned northward, east of the Big Black, I 
feared it was a mistake. I now wish to make the per- 
sonal acknowledgment that you were right and T was 
wrong. Yours very truly, 

A. Lincoln. 



Letter to J. C. Conkling. Washington, 
August 26, 1863 

James C. Conkling was an able lawyer in Springfield and 
a good friend of Lincoln's. He was a presidential elector in 
i860 and again in 1864. Lincoln's letter of August 26, soon 
after the success of Meade at Gettysburg, is in many respects 
an ideal summary of the course of the war and the policy 
of the administration toward the comple.x problems of public 
opinion and the slavery issue. As an argument in justification 
of the President's attitude to these problems and the course 
he had been pursuing, the letter is a model that will long 
engage the interest of students of literature as well as history. 
The letter states the essential issues about which men of 
divergent shades of opinion were then thinking, and answers 
them with energy and directness. It moves easily and con- 
fidently from point to point with a perfect command of facts 
and their interpretation. The argument has the advantage 
of being free from formality. Its influence in composing 
minds disturbed by the policy of emancipation was very great. 

My dear Sir : Your letter inviting me to attend a 
mass meeting of Unconditional Union men, to be held 
at the capital of Illinois on the third day of September, 
has been received. It would be very agreeable to me 
to thus meet my old friends at my own home, but I 
cannot just now be absent from here so long as a visit 
there would require. 



314 Appendix 

The meeting is to be of all those who maintain un- 
conditional devotion to the Union ; and I am sure my 
old political friends will thank me for tendering, as I 
do, the nation's gratitude to those and other noble men 
whom no partisan malice or partisan hope can make 
false to the nation's life. 

There are those who are dissatisfied with me. To 
such I would say : You desire peace, and you blame 
me that we do not have it. But how can we attain it ? 
There are but three conceivable ways. First, to sup- 
press the rebellion by force of arms. This I am trying 
to do. Are you for it? If you are, so far we are 
agreed. If you are not for it, a second way is to give 
up the Union. I am against this. Are you for it? If 
you are, you should say so plainly. If you are not for 
force, nor yet for dissolution, there only remains some 
miaginable compromise. I do not believe any com- 
promise embracing the maintenance of the Union is 
now possible. All I learn leads to a directly opposite 
belief. The strength of the rebellion is its military, 
its army. That army dominates all the country and 
all the people within its range. Any offer of terms 
made by any man or men within that range, in oppo- 
sition to that army, is simply nothing for the present, 
because such man or men have no power whatever to 
enforce their side of a compromise, if one were made 
with them. 

To illustrate : Suppose refugees from the South 
and peace men of the North get together in convention, 
and frame and proclaim a compromise embracing a 
restoration of the Union. In what way can that com- 
promise be used to keep Lee's army out of Pennsyl- 
vania? Meade's army can keep Lee's out of Penn- 
sylvania, and, I think, can ultimately drive it out of 
existence. But no paper compromise, to which the 
controllers of Lee's army are not agreed, can at all 
affect that army. In an effort at such compromise we 
should waste time which the enemy would improve to 
our disadvantage ; and that would be all. A compro- 



Letters 315 

niise, to be effective, must be made either with those 
who control the rebel army, or with the people first 
liberated from the domination of that army by the 
success of our own army. Now, allow me to assure 
you that no word or intimation from that rebel army, 
or from any of the men controlling it, in relation to 
any peace compromise, has ever come to my knowledge 
or belief. All charges and insinuations to the con- 
trary are deceptive and groundless. And I promise 
you that if any such proposition shall hereafter come, 
it shall not be rejected and kept a secret from you. I 
freely acknowledge myself the servant of the people, 
according to the bond of service — the United States 
Constitution— and that, as such, I am responsible to 
them. 

But to be plain. You are dissatisfied wnth me about 
the negro. Quite likely there is a difference of opinion 
between you and myself upon that subject. I certainly 
wish that all men could be free, while I suppose you 
do not. Yet I have neither adopted nor proposed any 
measure which is not consistent with even your views, 
provided you are for the Union. I suggested compen- 
sated emancipation, to which you replied you wished 
not to be taxed to buy negroes. But I had not asked 
you to be taxed to buy negroes, except in such way 
as to save you from greater taxation to save the Union 
exclusively by other means. 

You dislike the Emancipation Proclamation, and per- 
haps would have it retracted. You say it is uncon- 
stitutional. I think differently. I think the Consti- 
tution invests its commander in chief with the law of 
war in time of war. The most that can be said — if so 
much — is that slaves are property. Is there — has there 
ever been — any question that, by the law of war, prop- 
erty, both of enemies and friends, may be taken when 
needed? And is it not needed whenever taking it 
helps us or hurts the enemy? Armies the world over 
destroy enemies' property when they cannot use it, 
and even destroy their own to keep it from the enemy. 



316 Appendix 

Civilized belligerents do all in their power to help them- 
selves or hurt the enemy, except a few things regarded 
as barbarous or cruel. Among the exceptions are the 
massacre of vanquished foes and noncombatants, male 
and female. 

But the proclamation, as law, either is valid or is 
not valid. If it is not valid, it needs no retraction. 
If it is valid, it cannot be retracted any more than 
the dead can be brought to life. Some of you profess 
to think its retraction would operate favorably for the 
Union. Why better after the retraction than before 
the issue? There was more than a year and a 
half of trial to suppress the rebellion before the proc- 
lamation issued, the last one hundred days of which 
passed under an explicit notice that it was coming, 
unless averted by those in revolt returning to their 
allegiance. The war has certainly progressed as favor- 
ably for us since the issue of the proclamation as 
before. I know, as fully as one can know the opinions 
of others, that some of the commanders of our armies 
in the field who have given us our most important suc- 
cesses, believe the emancipation policy and the use of 
colored troops constitute the heaviest blow yet dealt 
to the rebellion, and that at least one of these impor- 
tant successes could not have been achieved when it 
was, but for the aid of black soldiers. Among the 
commanders holding these views are some who have 
never had any affinity with what is called Abolitionism 
or with Republican party politics, but who hold them 
purely as military opinions. 1 submit these opinions 
as being entitled to some weight against the objections 
often urged, that emancipation and arming the blacks 
are unwise as military measures, and were not adopted 
as such in good faith. 

You say you will not fight to free negroes. Some of 
them seem willing to fight for you ; but no matter. 
Fight yovi, then, exclusively to save the Union. I 
issued the proclamation on purpose to aid you in sav- 
ing the Union. Whenever you shall have conquered 



1 



Letters 3 1 7 

all resistance to the Union, if I shall ur<j;c you to con- 
tinue fightin.i;-, il will be an ajit time then lor you to 
declare you will not fight to free negroes. 

1 thought that in your struggles for the Union, to 
whatever extent the negroes should cease helping the 
enemy, to that extent it weakened the enemy in his 
resistance to you. Do you think ditlerently ? 1 thought 
that whatever negroes could be got to do as soldiers 
leaves just so much less for white soldiers to do in 
saving the Union. Does it appear otherwise to you ? 
Rut negroes, like other people, act upon motives. \\"hy 
should they do anything for us, if we will do nothing 
for ihem? If they stake their lives for us. they must 
be prompted by the strongest motive, even the promise 
of freedom. And the promise being made, nuist be 
kept. 

The signs look better. The Father of Waters agains 
goes unvexed to the sea. Thanks to the great North- 
west for it. Nor yet wholly to them. Three hundred 
miles up they met New England, Empire, Keystone, 
and Jersey hewing their way right and left. The 
sunny South, too. in more colors than one, also lent 
a hand. On the spot, their part of the history was 
jotted down in black and white. The job was a great 
national one, and let none be banned who bore an 
honorable part in it. And while those who have cleared 
the great river may well be proud, even that is not all. 
It is hard to say that anything has been more bravelv 
and well done than at Antietam. Murf reesboro, Gettys- 
Inirg, and on many fields of lesser note. Nor must 
Uncle Sam's web- feet be forgotten. At all the watery 
margins they have been present. Not only on the deep 
sea, the broad bay, and the rapid river, but also up the 
narrow, muddy bayou, and wdierever the ground was 
a little damp, they have been and made their tracks. 
Thanks to all — for the great Republic — for the prin- 
ciple it lives by and keeps alive — for man's vast future 
— thanks to all. 

Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it 



318 Appendix 

will come soon, and come to stay ; and so come as to 
be worth the keeping in all future time. It will then 
have been proved that among freemen there can be 
no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet, and 
that they who take such appeal are sure to lose their 
case and pay the cost. And then there will be some 
black men who can remember that with silent tongue, 
and clenched teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised 
bayonet, they have helped mankind on to this great 
consummation, while I fear there will be some white 
ones unable to forget that with malignant heart and 
deceitful speech they strove to hinder it. 

Still, let us not be over-sanguine of a speedy, final 
triumph. Let us be quite sober. Let us diligently 
apply the means, never doubting that a just God, in His 
own good time, will give us the rightful result. 

Yours very truly, 

A. Lincoln. 

Letter to A. G. Hodges^ of Kentucky. 

Washington, April 4, 1864 

Colonel Albert Hodges, at one time state printer of Ken- 
tucky, and editor of The Commomvealth, a Union paper of 
Frankfort, Ky., when this letter was written, had protested 
against the arming of negroes to assist in putting down the 
rebellion. Lincoln's letter is an argument in defence of his 
decision to use negro soldiers. It is interesting to compare, 
in motive and method, this letter with those written to Greeley 
and Conkling. 

I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, 
nothing is wrong. I cannot remember when I did not 
so think and feel, and yet I have never understood that 
the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right 
to act officially upon this judgment and feeling. It 
was in the oath that I took, that I would, to the best 
of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Con- 
stitution of the United States. I could not take office 
without taking the oath. Nor was it my view that I 
might take an oath to get power, and break the oath in 



Letters 319 

using the power. T understood, too, that in ordinary 
civil administration this oath even forhade nic to prac- 
tically indulge my primary abstract judgment on the 
moral question of slavery. I had pul,)iicly declared 
this many times and in many ways. And I aver that, 
to this day, I have done no official act in mere defer- 
ence to my abstract feeling and judgment on slavery. 
I did understand, however, that my oath to preserve 
the Constitution to the best of my ability imposed 
upon me the duty of preserving, by every indispensable 
means, that government — that nation — of which that 
Constitution was the organic law. Was it possible 
to lose the nation and yet preserve the Constitution? 
By general law, life and limb must be protected, yet 
often a limb must be amputated to save a life ; but a life 
is never wisely given to save a limb. I felt that meas- 
ures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become la\\'ful 
by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the 
Constitution through the preservation of the nation. 
Right or wrong, I assumed this ground, and now avow 
it. I could not feel that, to the best of my ability, I 
had even tried to preserve the Constitution, if, to save 
slavery or any minor matter, I should permit the v.-reck 
of government, country, and Constitution, all together. 
When, early in the war. General Fremont attempted 
military emancipation, I forbade it. because I did not 
then think it an indispensable necessity. When, a little 
later, General Cameron, then Secretary of War. sug- 
gested the arming of the blacks, I objected, because 
I did not think it an indispensable necessity. When, 
still later, General Hunter attempted military emanci- 
pation, I again forbade it, because I did not yet think 
the indispensable necessity had come. When, in IMarch 
and May and July, 1862, I made earnest and succes- 
sive appeals to the border States to favour compen- 
sated emancipation, T believed the indispensable neces- 
sity for military emancipation and arming the blacks 
would come, unless averted by that measure. They 
declined the proposition, and T was, in my best judg- 



320 Appendix 

mcnt, driven to the alternation of either surrendering 
the Union, and with it the Constitution, or laying 
strong hand upon the coloured element. I chose the 
latter. In choosing it, I hoped for greater gain than 
loss ; but of this I was not entirely confident. More 
than a year of trial now shows no Toss by it in our 
foreign relations, none in our home popular sentiment, 
none in our white military force — no loss by it any- 
how or anywhere. On the contrary, it shows a gain 
of quite one hundred and thirty thousand soldiers, 
seamen, and labourers. These are palpable facts, about 
which, as facts, there can be no cavilling. We have 
the men, and we could not have had them without the 
measure. 

And now let any Union man who complains of the 
measure, test himself by writing down in one line that 
he is for subduing the rebellion by force of arms ; and 
in the next, that he is for taking these hundred and 
thirty thousand men from the Union side, and placing 
them where they would be but for the measure he con- 
demns. If he cannot face his case so stated, it is 
only because he cannot face the truth. 

I add a word which was not in the verbal conversa- 
tion. In telling this tale, I attempt no compliment 
to my own sagacity. I claim not to have controlled 
events, but confess plainly that events have controlled 
me. Now, at the end of three years' struggle, the 
nation's condition is not what either party, or any man, 
devised or expected. God alone can claim it. Whither 
it is tending seems plain. If God now wills the re- 
moval of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the 
North, as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly 
for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will 
find therein new cause to attest and revere the justice 
and goodness of God. 



Letters 321 

Letter to Mrs. Bixbv. Wasiiixgtox, 
November 21, 1864 

The most enduring prose with which Lincoln enriched 
English literature would include the letter to Mrs. Bixby, 
the Gettysburg Address, and the Second Inaugural, represent- 
ing respectively the three divisions of his written words: the 
letter, the public address, and the state-paper. Following closely 
after these, it would be necessarj^ to consider the letter to Conk- 
ling and the First Inaugural. It would be difficult to exclude the 
"literary gem" to be found in his letter to the king of Siam 
or his address to the workingmen of Manchester, England. 
Passages from his other writings, illustrating the excellence 
of his prose, are not difficult to discover. The letter of four 
sentences to Mrs. Bixby combines as perfect thought, feeling, 
and phrasing as, perhaps, may be found in the epistolary liter- 
ature of any language. 

Dear IMadam : I have been shown in the files of the 
War Department a statement of the Adjutant General 
of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons 
who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel 
how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine 
which should attempt to beguile you frotn the grief of 
a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from 
tendering to you the consolation that may be found in 
the thanks of the Reiniblic they died to save. I pray 
that our heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of 
your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished 
memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride 
that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon 
the altar'of freedom. 

Your.s very sincerely and res]iectfully, 

Abraham Lincol.v. 



LINCOLN'S VERSE 

The poetic vein in Abraham Lincoln cropped our 
in several compositions in rhyme that have survived 
from his boyhood. When, after the assassination, 
Herndon set about to gather materials for his Life of 
Lincoln, he visited the old home of Thomas Lincoln 
in Indiana, near Gentryville, and obtained, he says, 
from Mrs. Josiah Crawford, a neighbor of the Lin- 
colns, some manuscripts of "Abe's early literary ef- 
forts." The most pretentious of this "doggerel" is 
"xA.dam and Eve's Wedding Song," which Herndon says 
was composed by Abe in honor of the marriage of his 
sister, Sarah Lincoln, to Aaron Grigsby, of Gentryville. 
in 1826. The "song" consists of eight stanzas, as fol- 
lows : 

When Adam was created 
He dwelt in Eden's shade. 

As Moses has recorded. 

And soon a bride was made. 

Ten thousand times ten thousand 
Of creatures swarmed around 

Before a bride was formed. 
And yet no mate was found. 

The Lord then was not willing 

That man should be alone. 
But caused a sleep upon him. 

And from him took a bone. 

And closed the flesh instead thereof, 

And then he took the same 
And of it made a woman. 

And brought her to the man. 
322 



Lincoln's Verse 323 

Then Adam he rejoiced 

To see his loving bride 
A part of his own body. 

The product of his side. 

The woman was not taken 

From Adam's feet we see, 
So he must not abuse her, 

The meaning seems to be. 

The woman was not taken 
From Adam's head, we know, 

To show she must not rule him — 
'Tis evidently so. 

The woman she was taken 

From under Adam's arm, 
So she must be protected 

From injuries and harm. 

Very recently Lincoln's authorship of this "song" 
has been challenged. In July, 1918, through the instru- 
mentality of Mr. Henry B. Rankin, of Springfield, 111., 
the writer was put into communication with Hon. 
Wiley E. Jones, attorney-general of the State of Ari- 
zona, from whom he obtained the original manuscript 
of "The Song of Creation," written August 14, 1818, 
by William H. Bozarth, of Grayson county, Kentucky, 
for Miss Ally Grieves of the same locality. Mr. Jones 
has kindly loaned this original and much-faded manu- 
script to the writer. It is the inheritance of Mrs. 
Phoebe L. Jones, of Phoenix, Arizona, a grand- 
daughter of William H. Bozarth, who has furnished 
in an affidavit which accompanies the manuscript f)f 
the "Song," a history of her family and the circum- 
stances attending the writing of the song by her grand- 
father. A literal transcription of "The Song of Crea- 
tion" is as follows : 

When adam was created he dwelt in edons shad 
as moses has recorded and same a bride was made 



324 Appendix 

ten thousand times ten thousand Creatures swarnid 

around 
before a bride was formed and yet no mate was found 

he had no conversation but seamed as yet alone 
till to his admiration he found he had lost a bone 
great was his Elevation when first he saw his bride 
great was his exaltation to see her by his side 

he spake as in a rapture as from whence you came 
as from my left side atracted and woman is your name 
then adam he rejoiced to see his loving bride 
apart of his own body the produce of his side 

this woman was not taken from adams feet we see 
so we must not abuse her the meaning seems to bee 
this woman was not taken from adams head we know 
to show she must not rule him its evidently so 

this woman was Extracted from under adams arm 
so she must be protected from injury and harm 
this woman was extracted from near to adams heart 
by which we are directed that they shall never part 

here is Council for the bride groom & likewise for tlie 

bfridej 
let not this sacred volum be ever laid aside 
the book thats Cald the bible be shore you dont neglect 
in thought words and action it does you boath direct 

the bride she is Commanded her husband to obey 
in every thing that is lawful until her dying day 
the bridegroom is Commanded that is to love his bride 
live as becomes a christian and for his house provide 

the bride she is Commanded to obey her hus1)ands 

w[ill] 
in every thing thats lawful his duty to fulfil 
avoiding all offences throughout the human life 
these are the sollom duties of every man and wife 



Lincoln's Verse 325 

On the back of the sheet containing this song is the 
following inscription, with the signature of the author 
and the date of conii)osition : 

The Song of Creation wrote by 

Wm H Bozarth August 14th 181 8 

For Miss Ally Grieves 

Grayson County 

Kentucky 1818 

William H. Bozarth 

It is apparent, of course, that the greater part of the 
"Adam and Eve's Wedding Song," ascribed to Lin- 
coln, duplicates almost literally a good part of Bo- 
zarth's "Song of Creation," written eight years earlier. 
It is evident that the Bozarth stanzas are the original 
of the lines ascribed to Lincoln. Lincoln's verses are 
assigned to the year 1826, when he would be seventeen 
years of age; Bozarth (1796-1825) wrote his lines in 
1818, and his death occurred the year before the Lin- 
coln verses are alleged to have been written. 

The writer of this volume has not had an oppor- 
tunity to examine the manuscript from which Herndon 
reproduced the Lincoln ".Song." and is therefore lim- 
ited to a comparison of Herndon's version with the 
original manuscript of the Bozarth verses. This com- 
parison, in itself, leads to the conclusion that young 
Abe must have had access to Bozarth's lines, possibly 
through a Kentucky newspaper taken by some one in 
his Indiana neighborhood. Herndon (page 57) speaks 
of "the only newspaper — sent from Louisville." taken 
'by the keeper of the store at Gentryville. one Jones, 
"at whose place of business gathered Abe, Dennis 
Hanks, Baldwin, the blacksmith, and other kindred 
spirits to discuss such topics as are the exclusive prop- 
erty of the store no longer." If Herndon's version was 
furnished by Abe at his sister's marriage, it seems 
probable that he selected for his purpose certain of 
the Bozarth lines and added a stanza of his own mak- 
ing. In this case, he improved the stanzas selected by 



326 Appendix 

a few verbal changes. Herndon, as well as other of 
Lincoln's biographers, creates the impression that, in 
the neighborhood of Gentryville, young Abe was the 
cleverest of all in the art of writing. Herndon speaks 
of a boyhood composition on the "American Govern- 
ment," which the local Judge John Pitcher, from whom 
Abe borrowed books, read and declared "the world 
couldn't beat it ;" and of another of Abe's articles on 
"Temperance," which was "furnished to an Ohio news- 
paper for publication." Herndon shows that Lincoln, 
as a boy, was accustomed to write rhymes, satiric and 
otherwise ; and Arnold (page 24) quotes Dennis Hanks 
as saying of Abe, "He was always reading, writing, 
cyphering, writing poetry." 

In the Century Magazine for April, 1894, John G. 
Nicolay contributed a valuable article on "Lincoln's 
Literary Experiments." He reproduced two of Lin- 
coln's most serious attempts at verse writing, compo- 
sitions written after he had become a lawyer and poli- 
tician at Springfield. Lincoln sent these two poems 
to his "Friend Johnson," whom Mr. Nicolay identifies 
no further. One of the poems was included in a letter 
Lincoln wrote to Johnson, April 18, 1846, in which 
he tells the circumstances of its composition : "In the 
fall of 1844, thinking I might aid some to carry the 
State of Indiana for Mr. Clay, I went into the neigh- 
borhood in that State in which I was raised, where my 
mother and only sister were buried, and from which 
I had been absent about fifteen years. 

"That part of the country is, within itself, as unpo- 
etical as any spot of the earth ; but still, seeing it and 
its objects and inhabitants aroused feelings in me which 
were certainly poetry, though whether my expression 
of those feelings is poetry is quite another question. 
When I got to writing, the change of subject divided 
the thing into four little divisions or cantos, the first 
only of which I send you now, and may send the others 
hereafter." The verses follow : 



Lincoln's Verse 327 

My childhood's home I see again, 

And sadden with the view ; 
And still, as memory crowds my brain, 

There's pleasure in it too. 

Memory ! thou midway world 
'Twixt earth and paradise. 

Where things decayed and loved ones lost 
In dreamy shadows rise, 

And, freed from all that's earthly vile, 

Seem hallowed, pure and bright, 
Like scenes in some enchanted isle 

All bathed in liquid light. 

As dusky mountains please the eye 

When twilight chases day ; 
As bugle-notes that, passing by. 

In distance die away ; 

As leaving some grand waterfall, 

We, lingering, list its roar — 
So memory will hallow all 

We've known but know no more. 

Near twenty years have passed away 

Since here I bid farewell 
To woods and fields, and scenes of play. 

And playmates loved so well. 

Where many were, but few remain 

Of old familiar things ; 
But seeing them to mind again 

The lost and absent brings. 

The friends I left that parting day. 

How changed, as time has sped ! 
Young childhood grown, strong manhood gray ; 

And half of all are dead. 

1 hear the loved survivors tell 
How naught but death could save. 



328 Appendix 

Till every sound appears a knell, 
And every spot a grave. 

I range the fields with pensive tread, 

And pace the hollow rooms, 
And feel (companion of the dead) 

I'm living in the tombs. 

On September 6, 1846, Lincoln enclosed to "Friend 
Johnson" another of the cantos he had promised, this 
one on a certain Matthew Gentry, "son of the rich 
man of a very poor neighborhood," who had been a 
schoolmate of Lincoln's in Indiana. This boy, three 
years Lincoln's senior, at nineteen, had become "furi- 
ously mad." and on Lincoln's visit in Indiana in 1844. 
he found him "still lingering in this wretched condi- 
tion." Lincoln made him the subject of this second 
canto. 

But here's an object more of dread 

Than aught the grave contains — 
A human form with reason fled. 

While wretched life remains. 

When terror spread, and neighbors ran 
Your dangerous strength to bind, 

And soon, a howling, crazy man, 
Your limbs were fast confined ; 

How then you strove and shrieked aloud, 

Your bones and sinews bared ; 
And fiendish on the gazing crowd 

With burning eyeballs glared ; 

And begged and swore, and wept and prayed. 

With maniac laughter joined ; 
How fearful were these signs displayed 

By pangs that killed the mind ! 

And when at length the drear and long 
Time soothed by fiercer woes. 



Lincoln's Verse 329 

How plaintively thy mournful song 
Upon the still night rose ! 

I've heard it oft as if I dreamed. 
Far distant, sweet and lone, 
The funeral dirge it ever seemed 
Of reason dead and gone. 

To drink its strains I've stole away, 

All stealthily and still. 
Ere yet the rising god of day 

Had streaked the eastern hill. 

Air held her breath ; trees with the spell 

Seemed sorrowing angels round, 
Whose swelling tears in dewdrops fell 

Upon the listening ground. 

But this is past, and naught remains 

That raised thee over the brute : 
Thy piercing shrieks and soothing strains 

Are like, forever mute. 

Now fare thee well ! More thou the cause 

Than subject now of woe. 
All mental pangs by time's kind laws 

Hast lost the power to know. 

O death ! thou awe-inspiring prince 

That keepst the world in fear. 
Why dost thou tear more blest ones hence, 

And leave him lingering here? 

Mr. Nicolay's comment on these two poems of Lin- 
coln's is that, although "they call for no special admira- 
tion on account of intrinsic merit, they are of exceed- 
ing interest as stepping-stones to the attainment of that 
literary style and power which, in his later speeches 
and writings, have elicited the enthusiasm of the best 
scholars and critics." 



MISCELLANIES 

Note for Law Lecture. Undated. Written 
ABOUT July i, 1850 

In the following note, Lincoln condenses the essential ethics 
of the legal profession. The note is autobiographical in 
respect to his own practice. It is now conceded that Lincoln 
stood among the first men of the profession in Illinois. Mr. 
Richards shows conclusivelj- that Lincoln was concerned in 
one hundred and seventy-five cases before the Illinois Supreme 
Court, and in two cases before the Supreme Court of the 
United States. This is not to mention his practice in the 
lower courts. Lincoln's largest fee, Herndon tells us (1:351- 
3S3), was $5,000, for services as attorney for the Illinois 
Central railroad, of which George B. McClellan was superin- 
tendent. Several young men read law in Lincoln and Hern- 
don's office. Of these, Mr. Henry B. Rankin, now eighty-two 
years of age, and the author of an important volume of "Rec- 
ollections," was one. Mr. Rankin still lives in Springfield. 
Lincoln's advice to prospective readers of the law will be 
found in his letters to Isham Reavis, November 5, 1853 ; to 
James T. Thornton, December, 1858; and to J. M. Brockman, 
September 25, i860, written after his nomination for the Presi- 
dency. The letter to J. M. Brockman is included in the 
Appendix. 

I am not an accomplished lawyer. I find quite as 
much material for a lecture in those points wherein I 
have failed, as in those wherein I have been moderately 
successful. The leading rule for a lawyer, as for the 
man of every other calling, is diligence. Leave noth- 
ing for to-morrow which can be done to-day. Never 
let your correspondence fall behind. Whatever piece 
of business you have in hand, before stopping, do all 
the labour pertaining to it which can then be done. 
When you bring a common law-suit, if you have the 
facts for doing so, write the declaration at once. If a 
law point be involved, examine the books, and note the 

330 



I 

i 



Miscellanies 331 

authority you rely on upon the declaration itself, where 
you are sure to find it when wanted. The same of 
defences and pleas. In business not likely to be liti- 
gated — ordinary collection cases, foreclosures, parti- 
tions, and the like — make all examinations of titles, 
and note them and even draft orders and decrees in 
advance. The course has a triple advantage ; it avoids 
omissions and neglect, saves your labour when once 
done, performs the labour out of court when you have 
leisure, rather than in court when you have not. 

Extemporaneous speaking should be practised and 
cultivated. It is the lawyer's avenue to the public. 
However able and faithful he may be in other respects, 
people are slow to bring him business if he cannot 
make a speech. And yet there is not a more fatal error 
to young lawyers than relying too much on speech- 
making. If any one, upon his rare powers of speak- 
ing, shall claim an exemption from the drudgery of 
the law, his case is a failure in advance. 

Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbours to 
compromise whenever you can. Point out to them how 
the nominal winner is often a real loser — ^in fees, ex- 
penses, and waste of time. As a peace-maker the law- 
yer has a superior opportunity of being a good man. 
There will still be business enough. 

Never stir up litigation. A worse man can scarcely 
be found than one who does this. Who can be more 
nearly a fiend than he who habitually overhauls the 
register of deeds in search of defects in titles, whereon 
to stir up strife, and put money in his pocket? A 
moral tone ought to be infused into the profession 
which should drive such men out of it. 

The matter of fees is important, far beyond the 
mere question of bread and butter involved. Prop- 
erly attended to, fuller justice is done to both lawyer 
and client. An exorbitant fee should never be claimed. 
As a general rule, never take your whole fee in ad- 
vance, «ior any more than a small retainer. When 
fully paid beforehand, you are more than a common 



332 Appendix 

mortal if you can feel the same interest in the case 
as if something was still in prospect for you. as well 
as for your client. And when you lack interest in the 
case the job will very likely lack skill and diligence in 
the performance. Settle the amount of fee and take 
a note in advance. Then you will feel that you are 
working for something, and you are sure to do your 
work faithfully and well. Never sell a fee-note — at 
least not before the consideration service is performed. 
It leads to negligence and dishonesty — negligence by 
losing interest in the case, and dishonesty in refusing 
to refund when you have allowed the consideration 
to fail. 

There is a vague popular belief that lawyers are 
necessarily dishonest. I say vague, because when we 
consider to what extent confidence and honours are 
reposed in and conferred u])on lawyers by the people, 
it appears improbable that their impression of dis- 
honesty is very distinct and vivid. Yet the impression 
is common, almost universal. Let no young man 
choosing the law for a calling for a moment yield to 
the popular belief. Resolve to be honest at all events ; 
and if in your own judgment you cannot be an honest 
lawyer, resolve to be honest without being a lawyer. 
Choose some other occupation, rather than one in the 
choosing of which you do. in advance, consent to be 
a knave. 

A Fragment on Free and Slave Labor. 
Written about July i, 1854 

Three years after this fragment was written. Helper's book, 
which was used as a campaign document by the Republicans 
in the Presidential contest of i860, was published. It showed 
that poor white labor in the South was greatly handicapped 
by the existence of slave labor. In these few sentences. Lin- 
coln distills the economic philosophy of a prosperous laboring 
class for anj' age. 

Equality in society alike beats inequality, whether 
the latter be of the British aristocratic sort or of the 
domestic slavery sort. 



Miscellanies 333 

We know Southern men declare that their slaves 
are better off than hired labourers amongst us. How 
little they know whereof they speak ! There is no per- 
manent class of hired labourers amongst us. Twenty- 
five years ago I was a hired labourer. The hired 
labourer of yesterday labours on his own account to- 
day, and will hire others to labour for him to-morrow. 

Advancement — improvement in condition — is the 
order of things in a society of equals. As labour is 
the common burden of our race, so the effort of some 
to shift their share of the burden on to the shoulders 
of others is the great durable curse of the race. Origi- 
nally a curse for transgression upon the whole race, 
when, as by slavery, it is concentrated on a part only, 
it becomes the double-refined curse of God upon his 
creatures. 

Free labour has the inspiration of hope ; pure slavery 
has no hope. The power of hope upon human exertion 
and happiness is wonderful. The slave-master him- 
self has a conception of it, and hence the system of 
tasks among slaves. The slave whom you cannot drive 
with the lash to break seventy-five pounds of hemp in 
a day, if you will task him to break a hundred, and 
promise him pay for all he does over, he will break 
you a hundred and fifty. You have substituted hope 
for the rod. 

And yet perhaps it does not occur to you that, to 
the extent of your gain in the case, you have given up 
the slave system and adopted the free system of labour. 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 

The literature on Abraham Lincohi is vohmiinous. 
Only those books regarded as most important for the 
purposes of this study of his contribution to English 
prose can be mentioned. Foremost of all is ''Abraham 
Lincoln : A History," by John G. Nicolay and John Hay, 
the President's private secretaries, and "The Complete 
Works of Abraham Lincoln," compiled by the same 
authors and published by The Century Company, 1894. 
Mention should be made also of the Gettysburg edition 
of the "Complete Works," published by the Francis D. 
Tandy Co., 1895. The "Works of Abraham Lincoln" 
(in eight volumes) is published by G. P. Putnam's 
Sons. The Lincoln- Douglas Debates are to be found 
in a well edited edition by E. E. Sparks, published by 
the Illinois State Historical Society, 1908; a valuable 
edition of the Debates with an introduction by George 
Haven Putnam is published by Putnam's (1912). 

Of the numerous biographial studies of Lincoln, the 
"Short Life of Abraham Lincoln," by John G. Nicolay 
is among the best ( The Century Company). The latest 
edition of the two-volume Life by Ida jNI. Tarbell (The 
Macmillan Company, 1917), contains new material com- 
piled by the author for the first edition and a prefatory 
study of new Lincoln material which has come to light 
since that edition was published in 1900. Other good 
lives of Lincoln are by Noah Brooks (Putnam's, 1894) ; 
by Francis F. Browne (Putnam's, 1913). and the very 
brief life by Brand Whitlock (Small, Maynard & Co., 
1908). There are many others. The best considered 
study of Lincoln by a foreigner is "Abraham Lincoln." 
by Lord Charnwood, in the "Makers of the Nineteenth 

335 



336 Appendix 

Century" series (Henry Holt & Co., 1916). The Life 
by Herndon and Weik (D. Appleton & Co., 1888) is 
still useful; also the Life by Isaac N. Arnold (A. C. 
McClurg&Co., 1885). 

Special studies of importance, among many others, 
are : "Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Distin- 
guished Men of His Time," edited by Allan Thorndyke 
Rice (New York, 1886) ; "Six Months at the White 
House with Abraham Lincoln," by Francis B. Car- 
penter — an indispensable source book (New York, 
1866) ; "Life on the Circuit with Lincoln," by Henry 
C. Whitney (Boston, 1892) ; "Lincoln, the Lawyer," 
by Frederick T. Hill (The Century Co., 1906) ; "Abra- 
ham Lincoln, the Lawyer-Statesman." by John T. Rich- 
ards (Houghton Mifflin Co., 1916) ; "Personal Recol- 
lections of Abraham Lincoln," by Henry B. Rankin 
(Putnam's. 1916). Other references are to be found 
in the text of the present volume. 

Many valuable essays have been written on Lincoln 
and his style of expression. Special mention should be 
made of "Lincoln, the Leader," by Richard Watson 
Gilder (Houghton Mifflin Co.) and the notable esti- 
mates by Emerson, Lowell, Schurz, and Choate. 

For the history of the period in which Lincoln's life 
fell, no more illuminating and authoritative account can 
be found than that given in James Ford Rhodes's "His- 
tory of the United States," 1850- 1877 (The Macmillan 
Co.), and in the same author's "History of the Civil 
war" (1917). 



1 



NOTE ON ILLUSTRATIONS 

The four pictures in this vokime, as far as the author 
is aware, receive here their initial pubhcation in a 
vokime on Lincohi. 

The frontispiece is reproduced from an etching by 
Joseph Pierre Nuyttens, the Belgian-American painter 
and etcher. Mr. Nuyttens has portrayed with remark- 
able fidelity the spiritual appearance of Lincoln as he 
matured under the weight of his great responsibility. 

The photograph of the O'Connor statue ( facing page 
64) was furnished for this volume by the Illinois Cen- 
tennial Commission. This statue, which stands in front 
of the Capitol at Springfield, Illinois, was unveiled 
October 6, 191 8. Lord Charnwood of England made 
the dedicatory address. 

The Bartlett picture (facing page 192) is from a 
])hotograph of a bronze statuette of the President, made 
by Truman A. Bartlett and exhibited by him in Paris 
in 1877. 

The "Masters Portrait" (facing page 128) is believed 
to be one of the best of Lincoln taken before the debates 
with Douglas. This portrait has an interesting history, 
which is told in the following words by The Masters 
Studio of Princeton, Illinois : 

"On July Fourth, 1856, Princeton celebrated Inde- 
pendence Day in spread eagle style. Mr. Lincoln, of 
Springfield, Mr. Knox, of Rock Island, Owen Lovejoy 
and George W. Stipp, of Princeton, were the speakers 
of the day. 

"Mr. Lincoln was entertained by Dr. S. A. Paddock. 
After dinner Mrs. Paddock asked Mr. Lincoln to sit 
for a picture for her. To this he consented, and they 
visited the studio of \\'. H. Masters, where this char- 

337 



338 Note on Illustrations 

actcristic portrait was made. Mr. Lincoln inquired 
if his hair was all right and sat for the picture with- 
out further preparation, except to run his fingers 
through his hair, with the result shown in the portrait. 

"About 1872 Mrs. Paddock loaned the original pic- 
ture to C. H. Masters, who had a large portrait made 
from. it. Before her death Mrs. Paddock gave the 
original picture to Robert Lincoln. 

"Mr. S. G. Paddock, a brother of Dr. Paddock, who 
is now living in Princeton and was on the Committee 
on Grounds at the time, says this statement is correct, 
according to his recollection." 



I 



INDEX 



(References are to pages) 



"Adam and Eve's Wedding Song." 

See Lincoln's Verse, 3Z2 ff. 
Agassiz, Lincoln's conversation 

with, 73 
Allen, Colonel Robert, Lincoln's 

letter to, 19, 176 
text of letter, 29U f. 
Alton, Lincoln's speech at, 61 
Army and Navy, Lincoln on, 179, 

180 
Ashmun, George, Lincoln's letter 

to, US f. 
Autobiography, Franklin's, 38 
Joseph Jefferson's, 40 

Ballots versus bullets, 153 f. 
Bancroft, George, on Lincoln. 211 
Bateman, Newton, 35, 118. 194 
Bates, Edward, on Lincoln, 207 
Bible, Lincoln and the, 195 
Biography, Lincoln's reading and 

estimate of, 38 f. 
Bixby, Mrs., Lincoln's letter to, 
184 
text of letter, 321 
Black Hawk War, 219 
Bozarth, William H. See Lin- 
coln's \'erse, 322 t'f. 
Brainard, Cephas. See Nott. 
Brockman, J. M., Lincoln's letter 
to, 41 (note) 
text of letter, 303 
Brooks, Noah, 73. 161 f. 

on Lincoln's reading, 205 
Brown, John, raid, Lincoln's ex- 
planation of, 101 f., 247 fi. 
Browning, Mrs. O. H., Lincoln's 
letter to, 24 
text of letter, 291 fif. 
Browning, Robert, Lincoln's 

knowledge of, 2()6 
Bryant, William Cullen, 97, 98 
(note) 
Lincoln.'s letter to, 117 
on Cooper Institute address, 104 
Buchanan, James, 91, 95, 120 
Bullitt, Cuthbert, Lincoln's letter 
to, 196 
text of letter, 307 f. 
Bunn, John W., 192 
Burke, Edmund, 38, 43 
compared with Lincoln, 8 
John Morley on, 7 



Capital and labor, Lincoln's views 
on, 80, 274, .U2 f. 

Carpenter, F. B., 109, 198 ft. 

Century Magazine, quoted, 326 

Chambrun, Marquis de, on Lin- 
coln, 21 )V 

Chancellorsville, Hooker's defeat 
at and effect on Lincoln, 162 

Charnwood, Lord, on Lincoln's 
oratorical method, 70 

Chase, S. P., 93 f., 121, 141 

Chicago Religious Committee, 
Lincoln's reply to, 157 

Choate, Joseph H., on Lincoln, 98 

Cincinnati, Lincoln's campaign 
speech at, 80 ff., 93 (note) 
Lincoln's speech as President- 
elect at, 131 

Civil War, effects on literature, 95 
Lincoln on, 197 

Clay, Henry, 141 

Lincoln's eulogy on, 32 

Cleveland, Lincoln's speech at, 



Lincoln's speech 
Lincoln's election 



136 
Columbus, 

77 f. 
Congress, 

32 1. 

Lincoln's speeches in, 32 
Conkling, J. C, Lincoln's letters 

to, 166, 313-318 
Constitution, Lincoln on framers 
of, 66, 99, 234 
and slavery, 250 
and the I'nion, 142 
Cooper Institute Address, 97 ff. 
effect of, 104 
text of address, 233-255 
Criticism, Lincoln's talent for, 

28 ff., 198 
Crittendon Compromise, Lincoln's 
attitude toward, 121 

Davis, Jefferson, 91 

Debates, the Lincoln-Douglas, 

59 ff. 
the earliest, 26 
the real issue of, 67 
epilogue to, 72 
Declaration of Independence, Lin- 
coln on, 46, 56 1., 66 
Democracy, Lincoln's views of, 
45 f., 67 f., 89, 152 ff., 180 



339 



340 



Index 



Dickey, Judge, on Lincoln, 50 
Discoveries and Inventions, Lin- 
coln's lecture on, 12 ff. 
Douglas, Stephen A., compared 
with Lincoln, 58 f. 
his view of slavery, 65, 94 
Dred Scott decision, 63 

Lincoln on, 56, 76, 101, 224 ff. 

Earle, John, on Lincoln's letter to 

Conkling, 167 
Education, Lincoln's. See Abra- 
ham Lincoln. 
Ellsworth, Colonel E. E., 148 
Lincoln's letter to parents of, 

303 f. 
Emeuicipation, Lincoln's attitude 

toward, 155 ff., 315 f. 
Emancipation Proclamation, 158, 

167, 308 (note) 
text of proclamation, 275 ff. 
Emerton, E., quoted on Erasmus' 

method of education, 41 
England and America, Lincoln 

on, 308 ff. 
English Prayer Book, 151 
Everett, Edward, oration at 

Gettysburg, 171 f. 

Farewell Address, Springfield, 129 

text of address, 256 
Fast Day Proclamation, Lincoln's, 

151 
First Inaugural Address, 141 

text of address, 258-269 
"Fooling the people," Lincoln on, 

177 (note) 

Galloway, Samuel, Lincoln's let- 
ter to, 114 
Gettysburg Address, 173, 176 f., 
209 f. 
text of address, 278 f. 
Gilder, Richard Watson, on Lin- 
coln's style, 173 
on Lincoln's letter to Mrs. Bix- 
by, 184 
Government, Lincoln's theory of, 

51, 138, 142, 143 
Grant, General U. S., 163 
Lincoln's letter to, 312 f. 
Greeley, Horace, on Cooper Insti- 
tute address, 104 
Lincoln's letter to, 155 
text of letter, 304 ff. 
Green, General Duff, 125 
Gulliver, Rev. J. P., account of 
conversation with Lincoln, 
109 ff. 

Hackett, the actor, Lincoln's let- 
ter to, 204 
Harlan, Hon. James, on Lincoln, 



Hay, John, 183, 207 

Helper's The Impending Crisis. 85 

(note), 250, 332 
Henry, A. E., Lincoln's letter to, 

72 
Herndon, William H., 35, 141 
Lincoln's law partnership with, 

35, 39 
Lincoln's letters to, 27 f., 34 

text of letters, 294 ff. 
on Lincoln as lecturer, 73 
on Lincoln's literary tastes, 22 

(note), 38 
on Lincoln's religion, 191 
Hodges, Albert G., Lincoln's let- 
ter to, 196 
text of letter, 318 ff. 
Hooker, General Joseph, 160 flf., 
170 
Lincoln's letter to, 160 
text of letter, 311 f. 
House-divided-against-itself 
speech, 61 f. 
text of speech, 223-233 

Inaugurcd, First, Address, 141 

text of address, 258-269 
Inaugural, Second, Address, 188 

text of address, 280-282 
Independence Hall speech, 138 

text of speech, 257 f. 
Indianapolis, Lincoln's speech at, 
130 

Jackson, Andrew, 120, 141 
Jefferson, Joseph, on Lincoln, 40 
Jefferson, Thomas, Lincoln on, 

88 f., 101 
on slavery, 80, 249 
Johnson, Lincoln sends verses to, 

326 
Johnston, John D., Lincoln's let- 
ters to, on thrift, 28, 176 
text of letters, 296 flf. 
Judd, Norman B., 96 

Kansas, Lincoln's speeches in, 94 
Kansas-Nebraska act, Lincoln on, 

59, 63, 222 ff. 
Kant, Immanuel, quoted, 47 

Labor: slave and free 

Lincoln-Douglas controversy 

over, 85 
Lincoln's theory of, 86 f., 332 f. 
Last Public Speech, Lincoln's, 209 

text of speech, 282-288 
Law, Lincoln's notes for lecture 

on, 28, 330 flf. 
enforcement, Lincoln's views 

on, 23 f. 
students, Lincoln's advice to. 

See letter to J. M. Brockman, 

303 



i 



Index 



341 



Lincoln, Abraham 

address to voters of Sangamon 
covjnty, 16 

text of address, 219-222 
as a man of letters, 16, 212 
as lecturer, 72 ff. 
candidacy for the legislature, 18 

text of platform, 289 f. 
candidacy for the presidency, 

92 f., 114 f. 
character of, 128 
education, early views on, 220 f. 
education of, 16, 18 fif., 22, 39, 49, 

111 
his analytical and reasoning 

powers, 27, 83, 167 
his talent for expression, 83 
his pioneerism, 17 f., 211, 279 
his preparation for the presi- 
dency, 119, 120, 138, 146, 154, 
162 
labor and capital, views on, 86, 

274, .332 f. 
literary allusiveness of his 

speeches, 25, 48 f., 54 f., 76 
literary style of, 17, 24 f., 60, 78, 
90, 111, 128, 139, 151, 167 f., 172 f., 
177 f., 182, 188, 209 
litigation, views on, 331 
oratorical inethod of, 48, 69 
race with Douglas for senator- 
ship, 58 
reading, his fondness for, 22 
religion of, 150, 190-196 
significance of his career, 15, 

211 flf. 
speeches en route to Washing- 
ton as President-elect, 130-138 
the lawyer, 35, 39 
vocabulary of, 20. 105, 176 
woman suffrage, views on, 18, 
289 
Logan, Judge Stephen T., Lin- 
coln's law partnership with, 
35, 39 
"Lost Speech," Lincoln's, 53, 55 
Lowell, James Russell, quoted, 98. 
169 



Man of letters, Lincoln as, 7. 212 
Manchester workingmen, Lin- 
coln's letter to. .i08 ff. 
Markens, Isaac, (luoted. 172 (note) 
McClellan, General G. B., Lin- 
coln's letter to, 162 
text of letter, .W6 
Lincoln's estimate of. 208 
McCullough, Fanny, Lincoln's 
letter to. 149 
text of letter-. .W8 
Meade, General George, 170 
Meditation, Lincoln's, on the will 
of God, 150 



Messages, Lincoln's, to Congress, 

152. 179, 27-. ff. 
Missouri Compromise, 43, 53 
Morley, John, 7 



Negro soldiers, Lincoln's view of, 

196, 318 ff. 
Negro suffrage, Lincoln's attitude 

toward, 77, 282 ff. 
New England, Lincoln's speeches 

in, 107 
New Salem, Lincoln's residence 

in, 19 f. 
Newspapers, Lincoln a reader of, 

20 
Nicolay, John G., 171 (note), 326, 

329 
quoted on Lincoln's congres- 
sional experience, ii 
Nicolay and Hay, 160, 217 
Xi'ith Aincricaii Review, riuoted, 

17K 181, 185 
Nott, Charles C, and Cephas 

Brainard, on Cooper Institute 

address, 104 

Oberholtzer's Abraham Lincoln, 

quoted, 104 
Ohio, Lincoln's speeches in, 77 
Ohio, 166th Volunteers, Lincoln's 

speech to, 180 
Oratory, Lincoln's method of, 48, 

69 
in court, Lincoln's advice on, 

331 
Lord Charnwood on, 70 
Ordinances of 1784 and 1787, 79, 100 
Ottawa, Lincoln -Douglas debate 

at 77 f. 



Parshall, N. P., Lincoln's letter 

to. 123 f. 
Peoria, Lincoln's speech at, in 
reply to Douglas, 42 f. 
extract from si)eech. 222 f. 
Perry, James Raymond, quoted, 

173. 181. 1S5 
Pierce, H. L., Lincoln's letter to, 

88 
Pittsburgh, Lincoln's speech at, 

135 
Poetry, Lincoln a reader of. 36, 

}7. 198-206 
Presidency, Lincoln's preparation 
for. .See .Abraham Lincoln. 
;in(l the Civil War, 140 
Lincoln's first nomination for, 

115 f. 
Lincoln's second nomination for, 

183 f., 279 f. 
policy of Lincoln foreshadowed, 
127, 147 



342 



Index 



Public opinion, Lincoln's view of, 
51 f. 

Rankin, Henry B., on Lincoln's 
literary tastes, 36 f. 
on Lincoln's religion, 193 
Reconstruction, Lincoln's view 

of, 187, 282 ff., 307 
Religion, Lincoln's attitude to- 
ward, ISO, 190-196 
Republican party, formation of, 52 
Lincoln's adherence to, 52 
platform eiuoted by Lincoln, 126 
Rhodes, James Ford, 336 
Robertson, George, Lincoln's let- 
ter to, 50 
text of letter, 298-300 
Rutledge, Anne, 21 

Secessif>n, Lincoln's attitude to- 

waru, 124, 126, 143, 147, 262 ft". 
Second Inaugural Address, 188 

tt ^ of address, 280-282 
Serenaders, Lincoln's address to, 

183 
Seward, W. H., 92, 115, 122, 141, 

144 
his "Thoughts for the Presi- 
dent," 269 fif. 
Lincoln's reply to, 271 f. 
Shakespeare, Lincoln's love for, 

198-205 
Siam, King of, Lincoln's letter to, 

158 ff. 
Slavery, Lincoln on, 56, 62, 77, 79, 

84 f., 138, 222 ff., 233 ff., 250 ff. 
Douglas' attitude toward, 65 
Smith, Truman, Lincoln's letter 

to, 123 
"Song of Creation," by William H. 

Bozarth, 322 ff. 
Spectator (I^ondon'), estimate of 

Lincoln's work, 9 
Speed, Joshua, Lincoln's letter to, 

50 
te.xt of letter, 300-303 
Squatter sovereignty, doctrine of, 

76, 78, 225 ff. 
Stedman, E. C, poem addressed 

to Lincoln, 164 ff. 



Stephens, Alexander H., 91, 121, 
126 (note) 
address against secession, 133 f. 
estimate of Lincoln, ii 
Lincoln's first impression of, 34 
Lincoln's letters to, 55, 124 f. 
Stuart, John T., Lincoln's law 

IKirtnership with. 21, 39 
Style, Lincoln's literary. See 

Abraham Lincoln. 
Suffrage, Lincoln's views on, 18, 

289 
Sumner, Charles, 121 
Supreme Court, 101, 143 

Tarbell, Ida, 53, 133, 217 

Tariff, Lincoln on, 136 

Temperance, Lincoln's address 
on, 30 (t. 

Tracy, Gilbert A., 217 

Trumbull, Lyman, Lincoln's let- 
ter to, 125 

Union and slavery, 304 ff. 

■Verse, Lincoln's, 29, 322-329 
Viele, General F. L., on Lincoln's 

knowledge of poetry, 206 
Vocabulary, Lincoln's, 105, 176 

War, art of, Lincoln's study of, 

162 
Washburne, E. B., Lincoln's let- 
ter to, 124 
Washington, George, quoted, 154 

Lincoln's tribute to, i2 
Webster, Daniel, Reply to Havne, 

141 
Weed, Thurlow, Lincoln's letters 

to, 124, 190 
Whig party, 52 
Whitman, Walt, Leaves of Grass, 

Lincoln's estimate of, 36 f. 
Whitney, H. C, 73 

notes on Lincoln's "Lost 

Speech," 53 
Wisconsin Agricultural Society, 

Lincoln's address before, 86 tl. 

Young Men's Lyceum, Lincoln's 
speech before, 23 f. 



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